Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.

A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary.

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.

When it is dark enough, men see the stars.

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

Men are better than this theology.

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity

Men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

One of our statesmen said, "The curse of this country is eloquent men."

Life is an ecstasy. Life is sweet as nitrous oxide.

A day is a miniature eternity.

The gentleman is a man of truth.

Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.