Ralph Waldo Emerson

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

All successful men have agreed in one thing – they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Good times are when people make debts to pay in bad times.

Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain.

Many delight more in giving of presents than in paying their debts.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

A church debt is the devil’s salary.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience. You will find it a calamity.

Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.

There are some debts that can’t be paid with money.

I’m in debt. I am a true American!

To preserve their independence, we must not let our rules load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.

I like my players to be married and in debt. That’s the way you motivate them.

Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open foes. The debt-habit is the twin brother of poverty.

If there is anyone to whom I owe money, I’m prepared to forget it if they are.

Debt can turn a free, happy person into a bitter human being.