Ralph Waldo Emerson on kindness

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson on conformity

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1940

Ralph Waldo Emerson on blazing your own trail

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

Emerson on the corruption of language

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Chapter 4, Language

Ralph Waldo Emerson on listening

When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet

Emerson on democracy

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1847