Ralph Waldo Emerson

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.”

The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.