Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Representative Men (1850), Montaigne; or, The Skeptic

A man is a god in ruins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Nature (1836), sec. 4

People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The source reads: “Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.” · Journal (May 1849)

More Stoic Quotes

Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

Matthew Arnold · Resignation (1849), l. 247

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius · Written in Greek in his private notebook while on campaign; the Long translation of 1862 is the wording everyone knows.

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.

Seneca · From the moral letters to Lucilius.

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“Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.”

“A man is a god in ruins.”

“People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

“I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

“Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

“You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.”