Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

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

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking.

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder – in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

A wise man makes what he learns his own, the other shows he is but a copy or a collection at most.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Human ‘beans’ is the only animals that is killing their own kind.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.