Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

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

Always do what you are afraid to do.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual.

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

Every time I think I have reached the peak, I look up and see I still have a ways to go. But I look back and see just how far I have come.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.