Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eye is easily frightened.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

Every great man, every successful man, no matter what the field of endeavor, has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.