Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

No one ever became great by imitation.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.

All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.

Big doors swing on little hinges.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.