Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

Necessity does everything well.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Make a good use of the present.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, the citizens burning to approve a wrong or the frowning looks of a tyrant. Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, as the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

A man’s interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

My favorite nightcap, after all this time, is still the cocktail of you.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.