Ralph Waldo Emerson

All diseases run into one, old age.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Do Good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.