Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Wherever there is power there is age.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.

You’ll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

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