There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,―expensive races,―race living at the expense of race.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own,...

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation’s time.

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself

The aristocrat is the democrat ripe and gone to seed

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. —

There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until...

That which builds is better than that which is built.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others

The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power

Be not the slave of your own past … plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old.

We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.

The cheapness of man is every day’s tragedy

The true poem is the poet’s mind.

There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, “Anywhere but here

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

In creeds never was such levity; witness the heathenism in Christianity, the periodic “revivals,” the Millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of Mesmerism, the deliration of

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days

“When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.” – Copy to Clipboard — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed

Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

A man is related to all nature.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud, you have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries...