Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he’s the hell of a diplomat.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

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

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder – in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

We are often deterred from crime by the disgrace of others.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.