Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Money often costs too much.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God’s sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can’t blame them for that, can you?

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

Remember where you came from.

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.