A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
All mankind love a lover.
The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.
We must be our own before we can be another's.
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.
All diseases run into one, old age.
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
Our best thoughts come from others.
Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.
There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
The years teach much which the days never know.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
