Ralph Waldo Emerson

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

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

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Life too near paralyses art.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.

A lot of power and bravery is practice. And some of that is taking the risk to try and be at the table. And then when you’re at the table, taking that first risk to open your mouth and risk being rejected.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.