Ralph Waldo Emerson

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

We are wiser than we know.

The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.

Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king.

Kindness, love, strength and determination personified!! Madiba reminds me that everything is possible!

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

For so many people, TV and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them. It becomes important for the world to see different images of each other, so that we can develop empathy and understanding.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

I don’t do quagmires.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.