Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

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.

It’s not whether you get knocked down, its whether you get back up.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

No matter how hard the past is, we can always begin again.

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.