Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every artist was first an amateur."

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

"To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote."

"Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them."

"He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life."

"The reward of a thing well done is having done it."

"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great."

"Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet."

"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."

"Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect."

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

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."

"With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now."

"What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find."

"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."

"Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest."

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."