Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

What we become depends on what our fathers teach us.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.