Ralph Waldo Emerson

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

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

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.