Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.

To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?