Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau Henry Thoreaus auntHenry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Danger – if you meet it promptly and without flinching – you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.

The eye is easily frightened.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

Nature hates calculators.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.