Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

The first wealth is health.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Follow your own passion – not your parents’, not your teachers’- yours.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

He that lives to forever, never fears dying.