Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every wall is a door.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

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

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

No matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

Pity the man who has a character to support – it is worse than a large family – he is silent poor indeed.

The never-ending task of self improvement.