Almost every famous person at least once in their life said something that was remembered by the society, and considered meaningful, important or just funny. Those quotations can be mentioned in various situations. Often they are used in speeches or in a humorous way. In order to find some of them grub around.
Ralph waldo emerson
Date: December 20, 2010
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
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.
What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.
A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.
Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
He is great who confers the most benefits.
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.
We become what we think about all day long.
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
The less government we have the better.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
What a new face courage puts on everything.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
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 encumbered with your old nonsense.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
The glory of friendship is not the outstreched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.
We are prisoners of ideas.
If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others with out getting a few drops on yourself.
To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the cropsno, but the kind of man the country turns out.
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Hitch your wagon to a star.
We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing
The world belongs to the energetic.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
As we grow old the beauty steals inward.
The faith that stand on authority is not faith.
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invated by worry, fret and anxiety.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eyes and the heart of the child.
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.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power.
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Children are all foreigners.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
The first wealth is health.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
The people are to be taken in very small doses.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
...the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude.
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.
Nature hates calculators.
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Common sense is as rare as genius.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility that religion is powerless to bestow.
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
Imitation is suicide.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Every artist was first an amateur.
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.
Work is victory.
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show for any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity.
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
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, you shall begin it well and serenely...
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
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.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
I hate quotations.
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
As soon as there is life there is danger.
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.
I hate quotations.
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.
Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.
Give all to love; obey thy heart.
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
The reward for a thing well done is to have done it.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting the best property of all -- friends?
To be great is to be misunderstood.
If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
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.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.