Ralph Waldo Emerson

The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.

The field cannot be seen from within the field.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

Happy is the house that shelters a friend.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew… it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.

Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.

Power is in nature the essential measure of right.

Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.

Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread

Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.

All writing comes by the grace of God.

The virtue of books is to be readable.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.