Ralph Waldo Emerson

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

The education of the will is the object of our existence.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

It is possible to be free and loving no matter what your circumstances.

Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.