Ralph Waldo Emerson

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.

Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar.

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.