Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.

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

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

We are prisoners of ideas.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Dharma is what the Buddha taught. It is the way of understanding and love-how to understand, how to love, how to make understanding and love into real things.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.

Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

You will know (the good from the bad) when you are calm, at peace. Passive.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

Find people who will make you better.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.