Ralph Waldo Emerson

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.