Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow. [Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.Lat.]

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.

It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.”

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.