Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

The eye is easily frightened.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.