Ralph Waldo Emerson

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven’t developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don’t know how to eliminate them effectively.

The less government we have the better.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.