Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.