Ralph Waldo Emerson

But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

Every artist was first an amateur.

A man is a god in ruins.

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn’t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly – a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg…

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.