Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

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

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.