Ralph Waldo Emerson

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

The years teach much what the days never knew.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

Your mind makes a cruel master, but a generous servant.

I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

She stepped out barefoot on to the grass, her soul naked, sun beating to her heart’s rhythm, bathing her skin. In her mind, she had already escaped.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.