Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

I know no religion that destroys courtesy, civility, and kindness.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

In all debates let truth be thy aim; not victory or an unjust interest; and endeavor to gain rather than to expose thy antagonist.

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

You affect your subconscious mind by verbal repetition.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do what is right.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge