Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Necessity does everything well.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

Every wall is a door.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

But the mother’s yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual.

A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.