Ralph Waldo Emerson

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

Live, let live, and help live

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? 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.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.

We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…

Never read any book that is not a year old.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.