Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

An index is a great leveller.

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.