Ralph Waldo Emerson

The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.

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

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P’s – pay, perks, power and prestige – rather than making profits for shareholders.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

With a burst of joy, my heels sprout wings, smile dancing. My heart sings like a bird caged, set free to soar, senses heightened like never before. Life. Is. Good.