Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust thyself:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

the only way to have a friend is to be one.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second;

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization.

There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and said.

We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point of view.

The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,--the soul, free, sovereign, active.

The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates.

It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago.

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future.

Everything in nature contains all the powers of nature.

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature.

The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.

There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense.

But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow.

Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house.