Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."

"Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom."

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."

"Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."

"Every artist was first an amateur."

"In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."

"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art."

"All diseases run into one, old age."

"We are wiser than we know."

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

"A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before."

"A man in debt is so far a slave."

"A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams."

"A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles."

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen."

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

"All mankind love a lover."

"Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well."

"Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain."

"Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding."

"Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons."

"Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole."

"For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."

"God enters by a private door into every individual."

"Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he."

"Hitch your wagon to a star."

"In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs."

"It is not length of life, but depth of life."

"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man."

"Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams."

"Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day."

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle."

"Men are what their mothers made them."

"Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science."

"Money often costs too much."

"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit."

"Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them."

"Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same."

"No man ever prayed heartily without learning something."

"Nobody can bring you peace but yourself."

"Our best thoughts come from others."

"Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be."

"Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual."

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."