Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our best history is still poetry.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

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

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

By indignities men come to dignities.

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

Pity is for living, envy is for dead.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

You don’t get respect if you don’t deserve it

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?