Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man’s crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

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.

Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.