Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

He is great who confers the most benefits.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Standing beneath this immense, bejeweled, star-spangled dome, breathing in its life, boundaries fall away, possibilities open up and my wings unfold. And I thought that you were the one who was the angel.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

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.

Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one’s destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.