Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

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.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

He that has more knowledge than judgment, is made for another man’s use more than his own.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Your dreams may have shattered, but that doesn’t mean they are over. They can still be turned into a mosaic of success.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

Whether he knew it or not, the life he lived was his penance. Punishing himself, for what he believes are his sins. Consciously or subconsciously, he creates the world he lives in. Never believing that he is deserving happiness, deserving joy. His self-destructive nature, in his eyes, and his eyes only, is justified. Everyone is deserving absolution, but he needs to understand, that he is the only one able to forgive himself.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.