Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

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.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment is the treasurer of the one who is wise.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Youth is unduly busy with pampering the outer person.

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

Where Example keeps pace with Authority, Power hardly fails to be obey’d.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.