Ralph Waldo Emerson

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

She was taken by surprise at quite how breathtaking the twinkle in her eyes was. She listened and watched attentively, magnetized. As butterflies danced on her lips, her own stomach felt butterflies.

The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.