Ralph Waldo Emerson

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

New arts destroy the old.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

We are prisoners of ideas.