Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.

The eye is easily frightened.

If we don’t occupy ourself with everything, then peaceful mind will have nowhere to abide.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.