Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

There are charms made only for distance admiration.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.

Seek not to be Rich, but Happy. The one lies in Bags, the other in Content: which Wealth can never give.