Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Life too near paralyses art.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

Youth is unduly busy with pampering the outer person.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.