Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

Round numbers are always false.

Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.

During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake.

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

An index is a great leveller.

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

What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.