Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.

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.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

There’s a great joy in my giving. It’s thrilling. It’s exhilarating. It’s important to be a part of sharing. It is my love. It is my joy.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.