Ralph Waldo Emerson

I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.

In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Well, dinner would have been splendid!

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.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.