Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, - under all these screens I have diffuculty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life.  But do your work and I shall know you.  Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.  A man must consider what a blind-man's bluff is this game of conformity.  If I know your sect I anticipate your argument.

Well, most men have bound thier eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion.  This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, author of a few lies, but false in all particulars.  Thier every  truth is not quite true.  Thier two is not the  real two, thier four is not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. 
Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison uniform of the party to which we adhere.  We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and aquire, by degrees, the gentlest asinine expression.

A man must know how to estimate a sour face.  The sour face of the multitude, like thier sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and the newspaper directs.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great sould has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.  Society is a joint stock-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.  The virtue in most request is conformity.  Self-reliance is its aversion.  It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

We don't grow old.  When we cease to grow, we become old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A nation never fails but by suicide.

Do what you fear and your fear will die.

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

"Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of Solitaire.  It is a grand passion."