Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare. While he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

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

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.’

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

Patience – the gift of being able to see past the emotion.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

Thought makes every thing fit for use.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

Knowledge is power.

The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

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

Find people who will make you better.