Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

The first wealth is health.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

The less government we have the better.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Tis admirable to consider, how Powerful the Kings are, yet they move by the Breath of their People.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it.

Understanding is a two-way street.

Every old poem is sacred.

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

If there be three distinct and separate Persons, then three distinct and separate Substances. . . . And since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God . . . then unless the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct Nothings, they must be three distinct Substances, and consequently three distinct Gods.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post.