Ralph Waldo Emerson

I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

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

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

The sky was the color of hard crimson, dripping down a canvas, the moon splashed silver across red. Her soothing balm healing my soul in swathes of calmness, I breathe in her tides and let my body be washed ashore, lying in the sands of eternity.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

Here’s the thing: the world is not going to issue you an engraved invitation to this life.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.