Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We must be our own before we can be another's.”

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.”

“There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.”

“The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.”

“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”

“All diseases run into one, old age.”

“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”

“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”

“When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.”

“Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession, is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations.”

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.”

“If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.”

“The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.”

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”

“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.”

“Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.”

“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it”

“The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.”