Ralph Waldo Emerson

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

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

A good scare is worth more than good advice.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.’ I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her… I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

You will know (the good from the bad) when you are calm, at peace. Passive.

Men are what their mothers made them.

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

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.