Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

Truth is the summit of being justice is the application of it to affairs.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

It is by the goodness of God that we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Bravery is more important than perfection.- Kanye West

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

Self-command is the main discipline.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

If we don’t occupy ourself with everything, then peaceful mind will have nowhere to abide.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

You are braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.