Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

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

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?