People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know. Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. Ralph Waldo Emerson