Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

Today is a king in disguise.

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God’s sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

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

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.