Ralph Waldo Emerson

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

People only see what they are prepared to see. If you look for what is good and what you can be grateful for you will find it everywhere.

The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.

The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

Every man's task [his 'great dream' and impassioned life-goal] is his life preserver.

Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.

Prosperity is something the businessmen created for politicians to take credit for

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist

A man cannot speak but he judges himself

Skepticism? Yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours.

When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.

Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.

The only reward of virtue is virtue.

When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.

To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.

Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

We are all wise for other people, none for himself.

If you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep you show it.