Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.