Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.

After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning, excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.

The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.

All science is transcendental or else passes away.

Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.

When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.

But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also the law of the human mind?

Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology.

Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago but it is put to better use.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical.