Ralph Waldo Emerson

“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.”

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.”

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.”

“Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.”

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

“Every hero becomes a bore at last.”

“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

“Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.”

“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

“Hitch your wagon to a star.”

“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”

“The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.”

“As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.”

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

“The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.”

“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”

“As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.”