Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-command is the main discipline.

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

For every why he had a wherefore.

Justice though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

There is always a best way of doing everything.