Ralph Waldo Emerson

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

An empire is an immense egotism.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man’s crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Real love begins when nothing is expected in return.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

The surest poison is time.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.