Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hitch your wagon to a star.
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
Every artist was first an amateur.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.
We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
Beauty without expression is boring.
We must be our own before we can be another's.
The first wealth is health.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.
We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.
The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
