Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman – repose in energy.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

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

Hunger is never delicate; they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions…

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