Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

Self-command is the main discipline.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

If we are but sure the end is right, we are too apt to gallop over all bounds to compass it; not considering the lawful ends may be very unlawfully attained.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.

When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.