Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Life too near paralyses art.

But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature.

Bondage is… subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes.

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.