Ralph Waldo Emerson

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.

An empire is an immense egotism.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

Remember who you are.

A man is a god in ruins.

Can you really explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

When the romance is gone, if it’s always you left searching for it, maybe it’s time to stop looking, and start searching for someone new, and start a new romantic journey.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

It is all right to rat, but you can’t re-rat.

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.