Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

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.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world’s eye.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar – that I call an achievement.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.