Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.

The world is his who can see through its pretension.

The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

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

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.