Life is a boundless privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have no guess what good company you shall find there.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMoller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPrayer that craves a particular commodityโanything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.
Ralph Waldo Emerson