Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Whatever advice you give, be short.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good;be good for something.All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.