Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

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

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Responsibilities are given to him on whom trust rests. Responsibility is always a sign of trust.

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.

Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?