Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

To know fulfillment, nourish what is for the belly and not the eye.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

You show your worth by what you seek! – Rumi

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.