Ralph Waldo Emerson

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

Avoid popularity it has many snares and no real benefit.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

Be ever on your guard what you say of anybody and to whom.