Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show…let me do it now.- William Penn

But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.

That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do what is right.

She was taken by surprise at quite how breathtaking the twinkle in her eyes was. She listened and watched attentively, magnetized. As butterflies danced on her lips, her own stomach felt butterflies.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody