Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

New arts destroy the old.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Your fingers caress my heart strings, shaping a silent sonnet in notes of love. Transcending space and time, bathing the ether in perfect harmony.

The money men make lives after them.

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.