Ralph Waldo Emerson

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow. [Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.Lat.]

Where charity keeps pace with grain, industry is blessed, but to slave to get, and keep it sordidly, is a sin against Providence, a vice in government and an injury to their neighbours.

If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.