Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Truth is the summit of being justice is the application of it to affairs.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.