Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Pity is for living, envy is for dead.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.