Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles.

Every old poem is sacred.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sun beams and you will always look lovely!

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

It always seems impossible until it is done.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.