Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

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

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.