Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.

Today is a king in disguise.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

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

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.