Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

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

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

Be confident, not certain

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.