Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

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.

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

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

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.

At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, It would be to use the phrase ‘f**k off’ much more frequently.

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.