Ralph Waldo Emerson

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.

We run to win, not just to be in the race.

Doing as others told me, I was blind. Coming when others called me, I was lost. Then I left everyone, myself as well. Then I found myself, myself as well.

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

Blame is safer than praise.

Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.