Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

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.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.