Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

An empire is an immense egotism.

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.

If you are going through hell, keep going.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.