Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

Go cherish your soul; express companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then will the faculties rise fair and full within

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.

The question is whether suicide is the way out or the way in.

The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design,--he will presently undervalue the actual object.

Desire is possibility seeking expression.

Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Whatever limits us we call Fate.

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

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

The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.