Ralph Waldo Emerson

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

We are just statistics, born to consume resources.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

Sad people dislike the happy, and the happy the sad; the quick thinking the sedate, and the careless the busy and industrious.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

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

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.