Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

There is properly no history; only biography.

Language is the archives of history.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.

If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others

He’s a man of great common sense and good taste – meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.