Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson

The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization.

There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and said.

We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point of view.

The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,--the soul, free, sovereign, active.

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

It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago.

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future.

Everything in nature contains all the powers of nature.

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature.

The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.

There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense.

But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow.

Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.

The silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

The love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion.

No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to heart.