Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The love that you withhold is the pain you carry.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure," but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any other than such.

In inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest.

Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engrafted with a foreign stock.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.

A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A day is a miniature eternity.

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, ? is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.