Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

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

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

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

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Men who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep. Who dare while others fly.They build a nation’s pillars deep. And lift them to the sky.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.