583 quotes
When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent:
All are needed by each one,
Nothing is fair or good alone.
Poems (1847)
The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be heroic.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.
The American Scholar (1837)
The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.
Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
Representative Men (1850)
The gods sell anything to everybody at a fair price.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
English Traits (1856)
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Representative Men (1850)
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery.
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.
Journals (1822)
When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal?