Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

A man is known by the books he reads.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God s handwriting.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

We are wiser than we know.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold

Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

As we grow old...the beauty steals inward.

Books are for nothing but to inspire

Nature and books belong to all who see them.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.