Ralph Waldo Emerson

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

When you know better you do better.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

Adam was but human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

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

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.