Ralph Waldo Emerson

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought – with these I deal.

Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.