Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Be an opener of doors.

A private Life is to be preferred; the Honor and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Nothing is black or white.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

For who is pleased with himself.

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

He will be loved when dead, who was envied when he was living.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.