Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.

Life is our dictionary.

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of …

The soul is subject to dollars.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

A man is a god in ruins.

We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.

Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through …

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and …

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. …