Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

A picture is a poem without words.

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show…let me do it now.- William Penn

For who is pleased with himself.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

You’ve got a big, big problem if you get caught up in what people say. If you’re gonna live for what people say, you might as well lay down and forget it. Because it doesn’t work that way.

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

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

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.