Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none.

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.

There is a crack in everything God has made

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Build therefore your own world.

To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.

Man is a piece of the universe made alive

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

there is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.

Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.

Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own?

Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going

Patience and fortitude conquer all things.

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.