Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
(Letters and Social Aims: Quotation and Originality, 1876)

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
(Letters and Social Aims: The Comic, 1876)

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
(Natural History of Intellect ,1893)

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.
(New England Reformers, 1844)

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.
(Self-Reliance)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
(Self-Reliance)

As soon as there is life there is danger.
(Society and Solitude ,1870)

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
(Society and Solitude: Works and Days, 1870)

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
(The Conduct of Life, 'Fate,' 1860)