Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

Sorrow makes us children again.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

The first wealth is health.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.