Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Sorrow makes us children again.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

If you would have me weep, you must first of all feel grief yourself.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.