Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Nature hates calculators.

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

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

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Friendship is the next Pleasure we may hope for: And where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

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

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

All I want to do is change the world.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

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

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

When you know better, you do better.