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 lose their tempers in defending their taste.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Try not. Do or do not… there is no try.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.