Ralph Waldo Emerson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

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

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

All that appears is devoid of independent existence, just like a magical apparition or a dream.

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

Revolutions are always verbose.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…