Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

He that lives to forever, never fears dying.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Genius Borrows nobly.

Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost, must always end in pain.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

Logic is like the sword

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.