Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman – repose in energy.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

The education of the will is the object of our existence.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.