Ralph Waldo Emerson

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.

We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

A picture is a poem without words.

Syllables govern the world.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.