The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American philosopher, essayist, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid-1800s. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground-breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”. Considered one of the great orators of the time, Emerson’s enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds while speaking on the topic. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was “the infinitude of the private man.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.

Aristotle

Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle’s writings constitute a first at creating a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.

Aristotle’s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially Eastern Orthodox theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as “a river of gold”), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.
Despite the far-reaching appeal that Aristotle’s works have traditionally enjoyed, today modern scholarship questions a substantial portion of the Aristotelian corpus as authentically Aristotle’s own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtsʃə]; in English UK: /ˈniːtʃə/, US: /ˈniːtʃi/[1]) was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.

Nietzsche’s influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, and the will to power.

Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel (the youngest individual to have held this position), but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889 he went insane, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid-1800s. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground-breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”. Considered one of the great orators of the time, Emerson’s enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds while speaking on the topic. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was “the infinitude of the private man.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

Master yourself, then you can master your world. Man is manacled only by himself; thought and action are the jailers of Fate.

James Allen

James Allen (28 November 1864 in Leicester, England – 1912) was a philosophical writer of British nationality known for his inspirational books and poetry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Allen_(author)

The artistic temperament is a disease which afflicts amateurs.

G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, journalism, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction.

Chesterton has been called the “prince of paradox”. Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: “Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.” For example, Chesterton wrote the following:

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics and even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both liberalism and conservatism, saying:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an “orthodox” Christian, and came to identify such a position with Catholicism more and more, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton’s “friendly enemy” according to Time, said of him, “He was a man of colossal genius”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

The world is nothing but a great desire to live and a great dissatisfaction with living.

Heraclitus

A Greek philosopher of Ephesus (near modern Kuşadası, Turkey) who was active around 500 BCE, Heraclitus propounded a distinctive theory which he expressed in oracular language. He is best known for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire is the basic material of the world. The exact interpretation of these doctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictory propositions must be true.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/

He who knows a thousand works of art knows a thousand frauds.

Horace

QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS, known in English as Horace, was born at Venusia, near the border of Apulia, in 65 B.C. His father, a former slave who had freed himself before the birth of his son, sent him to school in Rome. As a young man Horace went to Athens and studied philosophy at the famous schools. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted in the army of Brutus, served at Philippi, and came back to Rome not long after. Deprived of his property as a result of the proscriptions, he began life anew at the age of twenty-four as a clerk in a public office. Not long after, he attracted the attention of Mæcenas, and soon became acquainted with Varius and Virgil, henceforth devoting himself to literary pursuits. HIs first work, the first book of Satires, was published in 35 B.C. About a year later, Mæcenas presented him with the celebrated Sabine Farm, and Horace was at liberty to the end of his life to do as he liked. Before he died he was famous: the Emperor Augustus commissioned him to write the fourth book of Odes. He died eight years before the birth of Christ.

The Epistle to the Pisos, or Art of Poetry, has been assigned by various authorities to the period between 24 and 7 B.C. Professor Nettleship (in his Lectures and Essays) believes it to have been written between 24 and 20 B.C. Its interest and value are considerably enhanced in view of the fact that it is, in Professor Saintsbury’s words, “the only complete example of literary criticism that we have from any Roman.” It is significant that the greater part of its subject-matter is concerned with the drama. While it has been clearly substantiated that Horace drew upon a non-extant treatise by Neoptolemus of Parium, an Alexandrian critic of uncertain date, the fact that Horace made use of and molded the ideas of his predecessor is important. The Art of Poetry is on the whole a somewhat arbitrary manual; the greatest importance is there attached to the purely formal side of writing; the dramatist must adhere closely to the five acts, the chorus, and son on; proportion, good sense, decorum, cannot be neglected. Of the practical value of the work before the Renaissance, it is impossible to know; of its influence since that time, it can only be said that it was as widespread as that of Aristotle. Horace’s doctrine of “pleasure and profit” was to be repeated innumerable times, and is still a criterion of criticism. Mr. Spingarn’s statement that “critical activity in nearly all the countries of western Europe seems to have been ushered in by the translation of Horace’s Ars Poetica into the vernacular tongues” is but another proof of the popularity of the work.

http://www.theatredatabase.com/ancient/horace_001.html

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, one of the greatest figures in Western literature. In literature Goethe gained early fame with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, FAUST. Like the famous character of this poem, Goethe was interested in alchemy. He also made important discoveries in connection with plant and animal life, and evolved a non-Newtonian and unorthodox theory of the character of light and color, which has influenced such abstract painters as Kandinsky and Mondrian.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/goethe.htm

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world.

Schopenhauer’s most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man’s basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, Buddhism, and Vedanta.

Schopenhauer’s metaphysical analysis of will, his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known thinkers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank, Carl Gustav Jung, and Jorge Luis Borges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer