Ralph Waldo Emerson

Respect the child.  Wait and see the new product of Nature.  Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions.  Respect the child.  Be not too much his parent.  Trespass not on his solitude.

The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness.  Wonderful is its power to charm and to command.  It is a mountain air.  It is the embalmer of the world.  It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary.  It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it.  By it, is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power.  Thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity; but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart, gives and is the assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy.

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.

Our moods do not believe in each other.  To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please.  I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow.  What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages.  Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow!  I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast.

If you can not find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

If we meet no gods,  it is because we harbor none.

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.

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. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. - 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' - Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child.