Ralph Waldo Emerson

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

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

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others

Drunkenness spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans man. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad.