Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

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

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.