Ralph Waldo Emerson

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

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

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

There are those that are void of all mercy, but when it comes the time that they are on their knees, they plead for it. Those that were born with the art of deception, never sincere with their words or actions. But mercy is not theirs to take, only for you to give. Never compromise your standards, your beliefs and become like the ones who you are fighting against, but stay resolute to who you are.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Do not assume anything. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.

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.

If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper – and despise it.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.