Ralph Waldo Emerson

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.