Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P’s – pay, perks, power and prestige – rather than making profits for shareholders.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Think with your whole body.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

For character too is a process and an unfolding… among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.