Ralph Waldo Emerson

All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

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

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Already know you that which you need.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

They have a right to censure that have a heart to help: the rest is cruelty, not justice.