Ralph Waldo Emerson

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

The people are to be taken in small doses.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

Coercion is evil precisely because it…eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool in the achievement of the ends of another.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.