Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself, and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I’ve done it a thousand times.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.