Ralph Waldo Emerson

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

She was taken by surprise at quite how breathtaking the twinkle in her eyes was. She listened and watched attentively, magnetized. As butterflies danced on her lips, her own stomach felt butterflies.

As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.

You will know (the good from the bad) when you are calm, at peace. Passive.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Choose people who lift you up.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.