Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

The human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life’s sorrows.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage I this world.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

Part of her mystery is how she is calm in the storm and anxious in the quiet.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.