Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

All I want to do is change the world.

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.