Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

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

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

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

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

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.