Ralph Waldo Emerson

New arts destroy the old.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don’t think I’ll be back here. I think I’m done.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

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

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. 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.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.