Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Be confident, not certain

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that’s just a fact.

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.