“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

Placing human kindness alongside material necessity as a central purpose of life · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship
• Joy

“A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.”

Presenting friendship as something sustained by continuing care · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship

“We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.”

Presenting literature as an extension of human acquaintance and experience · Treatise, Notes towards the Definition of Culture

• Art
• Friendship

“The master sees greatness and health in being part of the mass; nothing will do as well as common ground.”

Finding strength in belonging rather than exclusiveness · Essay, Democratic Vistas

• Friendship
• Truth

“We are no better than you, what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy.”

Rejecting hierarchy between poet, poem and reader · Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

• Friendship
• Poetry

“You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.”

Inviting the reader into a relationship of equality and shared seeing · Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

• Friendship
• Truth

“Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.”

Suggests that generous expectations can call forth the better qualities in others · Essay, Prudence (1841)

• Friendship
• Hope

“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.”

Captures the almost miraculous quality Emerson associates with profound friendship · Essay, Friendship (1841)

• Faith
• Friendship

“A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”

Elevates genuine friendship to one of nature's highest achievements · Essay, Friendship (1841)

• Friendship
• Nature

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

Defines friendship through the freedom to speak and think without disguise · Essay, Friendship (1841)

• Friendship
• Truth

“We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.”

Recognises the large reservoir of unexpressed affection within ordinary human relationships · Essay, Friendship (1841)

• Friendship
• Love

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

Measures the richness of a home by companionship rather than possessions · Essay, Domestic Life, Society and Solitude (1870)

• Friendship
• Joy

“Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other.”

Advocates a balance between inward independence and participation in society · Essay, Society and Solitude (1870)

• Friendship
• Solitude

“It is, indeed, a great favour to be permitted to enjoy life still, so much as I do, in company; but it is a far greater one to be able to enjoy equally my lonely hours.”

Valuing the ability to find equal pleasure in companionship and solitude · Private note, late 1840s

• Friendship
• Joy
• Solitude

“It is grievous to make acquaintances with people, learn to love and admire them, and then bid them farewell for ever!”

The sadness of friendship made transient by distance and mortality · Private note, 12 July 1843

• Death
• Friendship

“Take care of indulging in little selfishnesses; learn to consider others in trifles; be careful to fulfil the minor social duties.”

Arguing that character is formed through small everyday acts of consideration · Pocket-book note, c. 1838

• Friendship
• Truth

“I humbly hope I shall be enabled to pray for my friends there, which is all I can do.”

A restrained response to anxiety for friends amid political violence · Letter from Norwich, 2 August 1830

• Faith
• Friendship
• War

“How much were they to me in my darkest hours; how true and tender their sympathy! never to be forgotten. How can I help feeling for them who felt so much for me?”

Gratitude for friendship becoming a reason to extend compassion in return · Journal, January 1827

• Friendship
• Memory

“No wonder then that, when mind fits mind, the pleasure should be so great.”

A concise expression of the delight of true intellectual sympathy · Letter to Mrs Taylor, 1801

• Friendship
• Joy

“I love to make observations on extraordinary characters; but not to mention those observations if they be not favourable.”

Combining curiosity about people with restraint in judging them · Letter to Mrs Taylor, 1797

• Friendship
• Truth

“As most of the poets translated are my immediate contemporaries”

Reflecting his unusually close engagement with the living French poets whose work he introduced to English readers · Draft preface to his translations

• Art
• Friendship
• Poetry

“Myself a young disciple.”

His modest description of his relationship to the recently deceased poet Ferdinand Freiligrath · Letter to Käthe Freiligrath-Kroeker, 20 March 1876

• Friendship
• Mortality
• Poetry

“Having been wholly taken up with my visiting my friends the brotherhood of poets in Paris, I have since my arrival not had a minute to write to you until the present.”

A warm glimpse of his enthusiasm for friendships within the Parisian literary world · Letter to Miss Compton, 19 December 1875

• Friendship
• Poetry

“Thank you for cheering my heart with the worthy man’s good opinion.”

Showing how deeply he valued encouragement for his early sonnets · Letter to James Spedding, 1830

• Friendship
• Hope
• Poetry