Ralph Waldo Emerson

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

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

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

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.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his work and in that work he does what he wants to do.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

The Public is merely a multiplied “me”.