Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.