Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.