Ralph Waldo Emerson

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

The first wealth is health.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

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

We live by our imagination, our admirations, and our sentiments.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is – Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

The city is recruited from the country.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.