Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Men who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep. Who dare while others fly.They build a nation’s pillars deep. And lift them to the sky.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.