Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Self-command is the main discipline.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

If we want maturity, we have to be mature. If we want a nation that feels hopeful, then we have to speak in hopeful terms… We have to model what we want.

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, ‘Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.