Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Never miss an opportunity of noticing anything of beauty ...”

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.”

“No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.”

“Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires....courage.”

“There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.”

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

“There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.”

“Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.”

“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”

“No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

“A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.”

“We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”

“The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.”

“Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.”

“On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”

“A man in debt is so far a slave.”

“Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.”