Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

To believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism.

The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

To believe in luck ... is skepticism.

Shallow men believe in luck wise and strong men in cause and effect.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature.

Marriage is the perfection of what love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.

Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out and such as are out wish to get in.

As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.

A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no luster as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

Shallow men believe in luck.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.

Men are what their mothers made them.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.

Every man is an infinitely repelling orb, and holds his individual being on that condition.

The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.