Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

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.

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

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?

Ready are you? What know you of ready?

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

You don’t create things, you discover things.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.

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

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.