Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

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.

We are wiser than we know.

Language is the archives of history.

He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper – and despise it.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!