Ralph Waldo Emerson

Necessity does everything well.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world’s eye.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem!

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

Let your family, staff, and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

Be an opener of doors.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

Every great movement must experience three stages ridicule, discussion, adoption.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?