Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

Dare to think for yourself.

Haste makes Work which Caution prevents.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

We can’t plan life. All we can do is be available for it.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.