Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

When you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

To choose time is to save time.

Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.