Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

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.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

The dice of God are always loaded.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

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.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Branching streams cannot compare to the source.

Practice is this life, and realization is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.