Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

To fill the hour – that is happiness.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Every artist was first an amateur.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

I constantly ask myself if what I’m doing is for me or somebody else. It’s tripping me out!

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

Where God does not govern, tyrants will rule.