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.

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Society is a hospital of incurables.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.

All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it….