Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

Wherever there is power there is age.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Children are all foreigners.

Travel is a fools paradise.

Excess in Apparel is another costly Folly. The very Trimming of the vain World would cloath all the naked one.

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Branching streams cannot compare to the source.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.