Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Be an opener of doors.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

He who praises every body, praises nobody.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Wake up, lift your head, open your eyes, and dream. Gaze softly into your heart’s whispers. Notice the pull of your belly and that which makes you come alive. Let your soul speak, beckoning you to embark on that one voyage you can no longer let lie.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

The years teach much what the days never knew.

Your dreams may have shattered, but that doesn’t mean they are over. They can still be turned into a mosaic of success.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.