Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

There’s a great joy in my giving. It’s thrilling. It’s exhilarating. It’s important to be a part of sharing. It is my love. It is my joy.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

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

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P’s – pay, perks, power and prestige – rather than making profits for shareholders.

I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve.