Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well — he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

There is a wisdom of the head, and there is a wisdom of the heart.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Love truth, but pardon error.

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.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.