Ralph Waldo Emerson

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

When the romance is gone, if it’s always you left searching for it, maybe it’s time to stop looking, and start searching for someone new, and start a new romantic journey.

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.

Punishment closely follows guilt as its companion.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me.

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.