Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

All successful men have agreed in one thing – they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

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.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

A woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.