Ralph Waldo Emerson

Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely.

Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.