Ralph Waldo Emerson

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Necessity does everything well.

Life too near paralyses art.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.