Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Opening amenities are often opening inanities.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

How can one be well…when one suffers morally?

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldnt find honest employment.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.