Ralph Waldo Emerson

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

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.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Get a black suit and just freeload, problem it’s too God damned late now even to be any of the things I never wanted to be.

The third component of the Law of Dharma is service to humanity–to serve your fellow human beings and to ask yourself the questions,How can I help? How can I help all those that I come into contact with? When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of the Law of Dharma.

The self divides into ten billion distinct illuminating spirits. Distinguish these without falling into names and classifications.

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

It is a strange desire, to seek power and lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is sometimes base; and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you’re not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos…

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth.