Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”

“A great man is always willing to be little.”

“We must be our own before we can be another's.”

“Beauty without expression is boring.”

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.”

“The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.”

“There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.”

“Good men must not obey the laws too well.”

“Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.”

“The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.”

“The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.”

“Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.”

“It is not length of life, but depth of life.”

“All diseases run into one, old age.”

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

“Pictures must not be too picturesque.”

“Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.”

“Our best thoughts come from others.”

“America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”

“Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.”

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”