Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.

Civilization depends on morality.

We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?

The laws of light and of heat translate each other;-so do the laws of sound and colour; and so galvanism, electricity and magnetism are varied forms of this selfsame energy.

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation - this to to have succeeded.

He that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.

Character is an invincible force, which acts by presence and without means

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the June night under moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame.

You take a weakness and start making it stronger.. You don't have to build your strengths - that you already possess... It is your weakness that needs the exercise

Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities.

A little integrity is better than any career.

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.