Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau Henry Thoreaus auntHenry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

What fugitive from his country can also escape from himself.

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?