Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

If people misunderstand you, do not worry…it is your voice that they hear, but what goes through their mind is…their own thoughts.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

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