Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

Oftentimes, it’s the way we react to change that is the thing that determines the overall experience.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

It is possible to be free and loving no matter what your circumstances.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

She is but half a wife that is not, nor is capable of being, a friend.

Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.