Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so we are.

Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

It is easy 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.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we will find it not.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

All the great speakers were bad speakers once.

Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.