Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

I thus free myself from the illness of ego-clinging.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.