Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

A man is a god in ruins.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

Right is right even if everyone is against it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.