Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

Our best thoughts come from others.

The first wealth is health.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium – indifference.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Already know you that which you need.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.