Emerson Said It: Happiness is a perfume

“The eyes of men converse as much their tongues.”

"If, in the hours of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice." He prefaces the assertion with two conditions: clear reason and severest truth. Nonetheless, the claim for its validity still seems out of bounds.

"When it is darkest, men see the stars."

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

“That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and our character.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody."

"If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when
he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner."

"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."

"Time dissipates to shining ether the solid
angularity of facts."

"No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I
simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back."

"Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth
in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences."

"All that I have seen teaches me to trust the
Creator for all I have not seen."

"The course of everything goes to teach us
faith."

"The faith that stands on authority is not
faith."

"Fame is proof that the people are gullible."

"The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are
not to be seen if the eye is too near."

"The first farmer was the first man. All historic
nobility rests on the possession and use of land."

"Whatever limits us we call fate."

"If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least,
for your good."

"Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior
state of existence."

"A man's personal defects will commonly have with
the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men."

"Fear defeats more people than any other one thing
in the world."

"Fear always springs from ignorance."

"Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is
certain."

"Always do what you are afraid to do."

"We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what
they did with their surplus capital."

"Earth laughs in flowers."

"Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty
out-values all the utilities of the world."

"Concentration is the secret of strength in
politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs."

"The only prudence in life is concentration."

"I can reason down or deny everything, except this
perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable."

"Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat
for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen."

"Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by
making them the fruit of his character."

"Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is
made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man."

"For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life,
if freedom fail?"

"So far as a person thinks; they are free."

"Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about
liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to
vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act."

"Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke
the unused path."

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

"We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are
self-elected"

"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to
spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

"Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and
fables."

"A true friend is somebody who can make us do what
we can."

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
Before him, I may think aloud."

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you
can afford to be stupid with them."

"The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched
hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else
believes in him and is willing to trust him."

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of
nature."

"A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend
is life too short."

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."

"I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I
would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them."

"I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them
to me."

"Every man passes his life in the search after
friendship."

"The chief mourner does not always attend the
funeral."

"It is always so pleasant to be generous, though
very vexatious to pay debts."

"Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor."

"The greatest genius is the most indebted
person."

"The hearing ear is always found close to the
speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him."

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what
is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius."

"When Nature has work to be done, she creates a
genius to do it."

"In every work of genius we recognize our own
rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."

"Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants
prayer."

"Accept your genius and say what you think."

"A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is
genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness."

"Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the
gentleman -- repose in energy."

"The only gift is a portion of thyself."

"People with great gifts are easy to find, but
symmetrical and balanced ones never."

"Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their
ability to outgrow small ones."

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying
to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done
what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

"We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that
feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it
takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world."

"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work
one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will
always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his
own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble."

"In America the geography is sublime, but the men
are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of."

"I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get
rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without
apprenticeship."

"We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation,
and following are our diseases."

"The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots
are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge."

"Good breeding, a union of kindness and
independence."

"The angels are so enamoured of the language that is
spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who
understand it or not."

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark."

"Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect,
still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes."

"'Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in
low disguises."

"The dice of God are always loaded."

"There is a crack in everything God has made."

"Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse,
is simply helping or hurting."

"It is very hard to be simple enough to be good."

"The less government we have the better."

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for
my friends, the old and new."

"No great man ever complains of want of
opportunity."

"Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who
can alter my state of mind."

"The essence of greatness is the perception that
virtue is enough."

"The measure of a master is his success in bringing
all men around to his opinion twenty years later."

"The search after the great men is the dream of
youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood."

"To be great is to be misunderstood."

"A great man stands on God. A small man on a great
man."

"Great people are they who see that spiritual is
stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world."

"He is great who is what he is from nature, and who
never reminds us of others."

"My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock
should find the time in my face."

"To fill the hour -- that is happiness."

"I look on that man as happy, who, when there is
question of success, looks into his work for a reply."

"Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on
someone without getting some on yourself."

"Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is
cheerfulness -- an open and noble temper."

"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp
of emperors ridiculous."

"His heart was as great as the world, but there was
no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong."

"Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces
that incessantly draw great events."

"Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go
to hell."

"Every hero becomes a bore at last."

"The characteristic of genuine heroism is its
persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly
try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic."

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is
braver five minutes longer."

"Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is
always right."

"Our best history is still poetry."

"It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone
but himself."

"Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself
if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age."

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we
counted our spoons."

"The end of the human race will be that it will
eventually die of civilization."

"There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is
unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it."

"At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy
begins."

"We are prisoners of ideas."

"It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men,
to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances."

"Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of
good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams."

"There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great
material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --"

"That man is idle who can do something better."

"What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of
the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason."

"The quality of the imagination is to flow and not
to freeze."

"We live by our imagination, our admiration s, and
our sentiments."

"Science does not know its debt to imagination."

"There are no days in life so memorable as those
which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination."

"Imagination is not a talent of some people but is
the health of everyone."

"Imitation is suicide."

"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."

"Every man is an impossibility until he is born."

"Our expenses are all for conformity."

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates
when he becomes a conformist."

"Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human
being?"

"The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we
have left their presence."

"Every thought which genius and piety throw into the
world alters the world."

"Of course, money will do after its kind, and will
steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed."

"The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by
virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine."

"A few strong instincts and a few plain rules
suffice us."

"An institution is the lengthened shadow of one
man."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your
own mind."

"In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to
keep their integrity."

"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he
is free."

"A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages."

"If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect
will grow."

"One definition of man is an intelligence served by
organs."

"We lie in the lap of immense intelligence."

"Everything intercepts us from ourselves."

"If the single man plant himself indomitably on his
instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him."

"Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the
hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world."

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never
know how soon it will be too late."

"If you shoot at a king you must kill him."

"I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is
to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on
a professor."