Ralph Waldo Emerson

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

The education of the will is the object of our existence.

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.

A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.