Ralph Waldo Emerson

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

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.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

The natural law of inertia: Matter will remain at rest or continue in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.