Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

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.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

Travel is a fools paradise.

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

If men be good, government cannot be bad.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.