126
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
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127
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide
128
To accomplish anything excellent, the will must work for catholic and universal ends.
129
Society we must have; but let it be society, and not exchanging news, or eating from the same dish.
130
I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emersonmisattributed·Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers, by Muriel Strode, in The Open Court, Volume XVII, Number 567·August 1903
Wrongly attributed
Universally attributed to Emerson, and it is in none of his essays, journals or letters. It is Muriel Strode, an American writer almost nobody has heard of, in the August 1903 issue of The Open Court. The rewriting is the interesting part: Strode wrote a vow in the first person about herself, and the version that circulates has been turned into an instruction issued to somebody else. Do not go where the path may lead is not what she said. I will not follow is.
131
It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances.
132
The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.
133
Above all, he must guard and you must guard him against indolence. Make him a strenuous man. I had to force myself into being strenuous as you know--had always an inclination to be idle.
134
In the course of time, we grow to love things we hated and hate things we loved.
135
Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.
136
Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality
137
The length of man's life, which is endless to the brave and busy, is scorned by his ambitious thought.
138
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
139
Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.
140
A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.
141
Life must needs be disgusting alike to the idle rich man as to the idle poor man, who has no work to do, or, having work, will not do it.
142
Work is the law of our being--the living principle that carries men and nations onward.
143
For the mind requires not like an earthen vessel to be filled up; convenient fuel and aliment only will inflame it with a desire of knowledge and ardent love of truth.
Socratesmisattributed·Of Hearing, in Plutarch's Morals, Volume 1 (corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin)·1878
Wrongly attributed
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel is printed on university walls under Socrates's name. Socrates wrote nothing at all, and the sentence is not in Plato either. It is Plutarch, four hundred years later, in the Moralia essay usually called On Listening to Lectures -- and it is not an aphorism about education but a rebuke to a student who sits and admires the lecturer instead of thinking. Note what the tidy modern version loses: Plutarch does not say the mind is a flame to be kindled, he says it is not a pot, and that what it wants is fuel.
144
In this life we get nothing save by effort.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Strenuous Life, an address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago·April 10, 1899
145
A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Strenuous Life, an address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago·April 10, 1899
146
The great crisis must come, or no man has the chance to develop great qualities.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Conditions of Success, an address at the Cambridge Union·May 26, 1910
147
Alas, we have known Times call loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called!
148
If to-day thou art not ready, how shalt thou be ready to-morrow?
149
Never had I felt confinement less—I who feel, when I am out of sight of living, growing grass, and out of sound of birds' voices and all rural sounds, that I am not properly alive!
150
Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.