Ralph Waldo Emerson

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

The surest poison is time.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

The sun is but a morning star.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lift human life above the level of farce and give it some of the grace of tragedy.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.