Ralph Waldo Emerson

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Those that are little, little things suit.

Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

I teach that all men are mad.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.