Ralph Waldo Emerson

Revolutions go not backward.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

The surest poison is time.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Revolutions are always verbose.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life;

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

The Public is merely a multiplied “me”.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!