Ralph Waldo Emerson

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows – it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.

For we put the power in the people.

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

For every why he had a wherefore.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

I look up at the universe and ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me here?’ I know I won’t hear a reply, but asking the question, makes me begin looking for the answer.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

Women tell men things that they are not likely to find out for themselves.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to prepare for the long haul, the rise and fall, and let neither define your sense of self.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

I could never be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household.