Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

Revolutions go not backward.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words – 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

We all really basically have a lot of magic … it’s only those of us that choose to accept it that really understand it.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within and available to you now.

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

What fugitive from his country can also escape from himself.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.