Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man’s crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Security will produce danger.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, the citizens burning to approve a wrong or the frowning looks of a tyrant. Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, as the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?