Ralph Waldo Emerson

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

In all debates let truth be thy aim; not victory or an unjust interest; and endeavor to gain rather than to expose thy antagonist.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.