Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself, and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?