Ralph Waldo Emerson - Select Quotes

Genius borrows nobly.
~ in Letters and Social Aims

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness, with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the hightest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto.
~ in Friendship

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

All great men come out of the middle classes.

Unlovely, nay frightful, is the solitude of the soul without God in the world.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

Tell me what a person believes and I’ll tell you what he’ll do.

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.