Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

What we become depends on what our fathers teach us.

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Your mind makes a cruel master, but a generous servant.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.