Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Self-command is the main discipline.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

Nature hates calculators.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

A woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

It is the amends of a short and troublesome life, that doing good and suffering ill entitles man to a longer and better

Travel is a fools paradise.

You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!