Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever limits us we call fate.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

There are charms made only for distance admiration.

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

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.