Ralph Waldo Emerson

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy.

Life too near paralyses art.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Tis admirable to consider, how Powerful the Kings are, yet they move by the Breath of their People.