Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual.

That man is idle who can do something better.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.