Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

The more experiments you make the better.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare. While he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

My love for you was like a poem I wrote; one that I disregarded as average. Torn out, thrown away to the rubbish heap, waiting; wishing to be picked up and appreciated by someone else, for the masterpiece that it is.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one… characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his work and in that work he does what he wants to do.