Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

“Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.”

“The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.”

“Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.”

“I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.”

“My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.”

“All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.”

“We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.”

“Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.”

“Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.”

“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”

“The house is a castle which the King cannot enter.”

“Life is our dictionary.”

“Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.”

“The street is full of humiliations to the proud.”

“There is properly no history, only biography.”

“The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.”

“The greatest genius is the most indebted person.”

“The true poem is the poet's mind.”

“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.”

“We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.”

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

“Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection.”

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.”

“Most people, who have quit smoking, have had at least one unsuccessful try in the past. It is not important how many times you try to quit. The only important thing is, that eventually you stay quit”

“A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.”

“As soon as there is life there is danger.”

“Human beings cannot endure the geological chaos they encounter under the soil of their own gardens.”

“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

“Hence, the less government we have, the better,--the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formalGovernment, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.”

“A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.”

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages”

“To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.”

“Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.”

“Be not the slave of your own past.”

“Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself especially how you choose to think about your situation.”

“Society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him; he has become tediously good insome particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.”

“Any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.”

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”

“The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.”

“Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.”

“The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base.”

“Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.”

“In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.”

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”

“To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false,--this is the mark and character of intelligence.”

“Skill to do comes of doing.”

“In the vaunted works of Art, The master-stroke is Nature's part.”

“Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.”