Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

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

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

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

Women tell men things that they are not likely to find out for themselves.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

Obviously, as you grow up, no one’s ever 100 percent proud of every decision that they’ve made, and that’s OK. I think as long as you learn from your mistakes and don’t make them over and over again, you’re on the right path.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

If thou art clean and warm, it is sufficient; for more doth but rob the Poor, and please the Wanton.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.