All things are engaged in writing their history... Not a footsteps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore, is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always do what you are afraid to do.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man builds a fine house and now he has a master and a task for life is to furnish watch show it and keep it in repair the rest of his life.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man finds room in a few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors for the expression of all his history and his wants.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man in debt is so far a slave.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for ten minutes longer.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is a method a progressive arrangement a selecting principle gathering his like unto him wherever he goes. What you are comes to you.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is known by the books he reads.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson