Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

In this magical hour, as the black ink sky fades to forget-me-not grey and the Cyprus trees emerge from the shadows, I tune in to my heart. In clarity, I choose to step into freedom to bring lightness of being and to be love.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.

All successful men have agreed in one thing – they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.

You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

A private Life is to be preferred; the Honor and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.