Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today is a king in disguise.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Revolutions go not backward.

All promise outruns performance.

Letting go is not giving up.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.

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.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

I thus free myself from the illness of ego-clinging.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.