Ralph Waldo Emerson

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

Earth laughs in flowers.

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.

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.

First and foremost, it’s going to be treat others with respect. Be polite: Manners go a long way. Try to come from a good place. And aside from that, stay focused and do the right thing.

For knowledge itself is power.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

Adam was but human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

This is the comfort of the godly: the grave cannot hold them, and they live as soon as they die. For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

If you weren’t such a great man, you’d be a terrible bore.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

By indignities men come to dignities.