Ralph Waldo Emerson

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

Live, let live, and help live

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Appearances matter – and remember to smile.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.