Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

We have a problem. Congratulations. But it’s a tough problem. Then double congratulations.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

Wake up, lift your head, open your eyes, and dream. Gaze softly into your heart’s whispers. Notice the pull of your belly and that which makes you come alive. Let your soul speak, beckoning you to embark on that one voyage you can no longer let lie.

Today is a king in disguise.

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon

How you gonna win if you ain’t right within?

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.