Ralph Waldo Emerson

No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.

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

To fill the hour – that is happiness.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Sorrow makes us children again.

Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.