Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.