Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

Not even the Devil can call a woman “Slut” if he is not able to make her fall in love.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Do Good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

We are wiser than we know.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.