Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman – repose in energy.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. [Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.]

It’s the ones that stayed after the Exodus, that I knew were real and could handle the truth; that would stay with me on my journey, for better or worse.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.