Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

There is properly no history; only biography.

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well — he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

Never judge a book by its movie.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.