Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.