Ralph Waldo Emerson

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Gold will be slave or master.

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

The surest poison is time.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

Bravery is more important than perfection.- Kanye West

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.

Friends are thieves of time.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

If it matters, it will hurt like knives or wrap and lift you in the most immeasurable joy. Or both. One thing is certain, you will feel intensely alive.

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.