Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

We are prisoners of ideas.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

Energy doesn’t lie so trust those vibes you’re getting.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.

To choose time is to save time.

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

The most dangerous people are those who have passion but lack wisdom.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Reality is a sliding door.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.