Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

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

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.