Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

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

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

It is by the goodness of God that we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Anger makes dull men witty – but it keeps them poor.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.