Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

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?

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear.

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

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity, Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be.

Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care.

Thou animated torrid-zone.

Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.

Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but can not steer their feet Clear of the grave.

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

The silent organ loudest chants The master's requiem.

But these young scholars who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go,