Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Avoid inquisitive persons, for they are sure to be gossips, their ears are open to hear, but they will not keep what is entrusted to them.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything… even when you can not foresee the outcome.

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

Letting go is not giving up.

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.