Ralph Waldo Emerson

Necessity does everything well.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Haste makes Work which Caution prevents.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

All colors will agree in the dark.

Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Understanding is a two-way street.

Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?