Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare. While he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only – not from its privileged classes.

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

What we become depends on what our fathers teach us.

Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

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

In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.