Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.

Men who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep. Who dare while others fly.They build a nation’s pillars deep. And lift them to the sky.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.