Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

When it comes to the story of my heart, I am the villain, locking it away; denying its right be free. The chains are tight, restricting its growth; long enough to see through the window of opportunity, but the only escape it has, is via the pen. Why do I deny myself the opportunities? I know it comes from a place of protection, but also of fear. I think my heart has grown a resentment because of this betrayal, and has decided, enough is enough.

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

What’s the point of having great knowledge and keeping them all to yourself?

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

Everyone has the right to be stupid on occasion, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.