Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Life too near paralyses art.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

My liver swells with bile difficult to repress.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Security will produce danger.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Knowledge is power.

Hate has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.