Ralph Waldo Emerson

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

Necessity does everything well.

Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

Remember where you came from.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Friendship . . . is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.