Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always do what you are afraid to do.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

We need much less than we think we need.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.