Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.