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.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness , we don’t really know what love is.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

For who is pleased with himself.

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.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

We love and lose in China, we weep on England’s moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we’re the same.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)