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.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

As Puppets are to Men, and Babies to Children, so is Man’s Workmanship to God’s: We are the Picture, he the Reality.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Have wholesome, but not costly Food, and be rather cleanly than dainty in ordering it.

It is a profitable Wisdom to know when we have done enough: Much time and Pains are spared, in not flattering our selves against Probabilities.

An index is a great leveller.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are all Innovations, which are the births of time.