Ralph Waldo Emerson

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

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

The only prudence in life is concentration.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

My reputation grows with every failure.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

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.

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

Choose people who lift you up.