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Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast the first a handful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Vast
Behavior
Mankind
Second
Malefactors
Class
Benefactors
Two
Handful
Firsts
Divides
First
Classes

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As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.
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There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
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The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.
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Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
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All ages of belief have been great all of unbelief have been mean.
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To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
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All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.
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When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages.
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The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.
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Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
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Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.
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Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.
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What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy only the precursor of the reason.
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There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.
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Do what you're afraid to do.
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The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.
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Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.
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