Thought makes everything fit for use. ... What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connection of thought. From "The Poet," Essays Second Series

Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight ; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to

We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective ; in other words their is properly no history, only biography.

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is ... Broader and deeper we must write our annals, - from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. From Compensation, First Series, by Ralph Waldo Emerson By far, this essay is the one I return to again and again. These days, there is always some wisdom that

Therefore science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics or, the state of science is an order of our self-knowledge. Since every thing in nature

A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the reward of docility and zeal of the

Yet vigor is contagious and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly, adds to our power and enlarges our field of inquiry. Considerations by the way Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson Almost a year ago

The feat of the imagination is in showing the convertability of every thing into ever other thing. Facts which had never before left their stark common sense, suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My

To help the young soul, add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame ; to redeem defeat by new thought, by firm action, that is not easy. From Success an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

We want, in every man, a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. So many identity token propositions! I am not sure its purpose. I am not interested in a static

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you seen not well what he hovers

They aim to give every member a share in the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a liberal culture with an education to labor. Lots of talk in cryptoverse continuing

What must I do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It

There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every

Really , all things and persons are related to us, but according to our nature, they act on us not at once, but in succession, and we are made aware of their presence one at a time. All persons, all things

I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. From Art, Essays First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson Thought this image

A just thinker will allow full swing to his skepticism. Today I learned about a university professor who argued that Thomas Jefferson's slaves were responsible for their own enslavement. I am skeptical

There was a story in the journals of a poor prisoner in a Western police-court who was told he might be released if he would pay his fine. He had no money, he had no friends, but he took his flute out

How much of human life is lost in waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many words and promises are promises of conversation! From Prudence, Essays, First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson