Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.

There’s much more stupidity than there is malice in the world.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.