Ralph Waldo Emerson

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

Revolutions go not backward.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Take away the danger and remove the restraint, and wayward nature runs free.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

My reputation grows with every failure.