Ralph Waldo Emerson

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men’s heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

The sky was the color of hard crimson, dripping down a canvas, the moon splashed silver across red. Her soothing balm healing my soul in swathes of calmness, I breathe in her tides and let my body be washed ashore, lying in the sands of eternity.

If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody’s.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.