Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Necessity does everything well.

If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper – and despise it.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.