We are told of his mode of preparing an essay,—of the slow-growing medley of thoughts on a topic, at last brought out and strung at random, like a child's variegated beads.

Emerson's prose is full of poetry, and his poems are light and air. ... His modes of expression, like his epithets, are imaginative.

Virtually at the same time as Kierkegaard gave philosophical significance to moods, Emerson was doing the same. In "Experience" he characterized our life experiences as "a train of moods" that color whatever we encounter, and he described life as "a flux of moods" that affect our "states of mind."

I love Emerson, the first great American writer.

Emerson broke away from all conditions of age or country and represented nothing except intelligence itself.

A cheery, child-like soul, impervious to the evidence of evil.

Modern technics, even apart from the special arts that it fostered, had a cultural contribution to make in its own right. Just as science underlined the respect for fact, so technics emphasized the importance of function: in this domain, as Emerson pointed out, the beautiful rests on the foundation of the necessary.

That which struck me most, as distinguishing him from most other human beings, is nobility. He is a born nobleman.

So gentle that he seemed only reading to one person, and yet his voice was so distinct that it filled the room in its lowest tones.

In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must each day surmount to fear.

The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.

A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.

These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.

Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Variation: If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?

Every man is a new method.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill!

And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is ever wide.

And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

What potent blood hath modest May!

A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays.

Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived!

The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech.

We boil at different degrees.

The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," — "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, — what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day."

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.