Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Hurricanes are named after people, baby, and I hope you know that falling in love with me will be so much more treacherous than boarding up the windows and waiting for me to pass.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

We love and lose in China, we weep on England’s moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we’re the same.

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That’s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

He who praises every body, praises nobody.

It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.