Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Our faith comes in moments… yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.