Ralph Waldo Emerson

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

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

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

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.

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

If you are good, life is good.

Security will produce danger.

America is another name for opportunity.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

The connection between us runs so strong and deep. It’s like a steel cable stretching across the ocean bed, so many fathoms below, that even the most skilled and courageous of deep sea divers cannot reach it to cut it. It remains strong, silent, invisible, invincible.

Whatever you have spend less.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.