Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

All promise outruns performance.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Property is organized robbery.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Life too near paralyses art.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.