Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man can... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Khalil Gibran

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.
Robert Frost

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
Lao Tzu

A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
Herb Caen

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Henry David Thoreau

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Henry David Thoreau

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
Henry David Thoreau

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau