Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Genius Borrows nobly.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar – that I call an achievement.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

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.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

The quieter you become, you more you are able to hear.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.