Ralph Waldo Emerson

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

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.

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

How many are the things I can do without!