Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real.
Perhaps they are.

I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.  There is no time in them.  There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.  Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.  Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike.  But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.  He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time.

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.