Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political servitude, were never taught by those who shared the serenity of Nature. For each phase of Nature, though not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not too demanding of our attention.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.