Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.
Ralph Waldo EmersonChristianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love Him was happiness;--to love Him in others' virtues.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHe that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIdeas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson