“Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.”
Variant: Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.
Variant: Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
“The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.”
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
“Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill!”
Suum Cuique
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill!
“In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.”
Prudence
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
Worship
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
Variant: The louder they talked of their honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Source: The Conduct of Life: A Philosophical Reading
“There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.”
Source: Essays and Lectures
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
Source: Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844