Ralph Waldo Emerson

The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Self-command is the main discipline.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.

According to this law [the law of Dharma], you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world–and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that creates affluence. Expressing your talents to fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.