Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.