Ralph Waldo Emerson

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

Labor diligently to increase your property.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.