Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

There is always a best way of doing everything.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.’

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold.

If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

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.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Goodness is the only investment which never fails.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.