Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

The first wealth is health.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

Eat therefore to live, and do not live to eat.

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Wake up, you’ve been sleeping. Take up your bed and walk. Stop blaming other people. Oh, it’s nobody else’s fault.