Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn

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.

You become what you think about all day long.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.