Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as there is life there is danger.

The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world’s eye.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

A man’s interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

All personal achievement starts in the mind of the individual. Your personal achievement starts in your mind. The first step is to know exactly what your problem, goal or desire is.