Ralph Waldo Emerson

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

America is another name for opportunity.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

A great man is always willing to be little.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

It all depends on you. You can go on sleeping forever, you can wake up right this moment.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good – and less trouble!

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.