Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Society is a hospital of incurables.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

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 man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

You are a constant. Forever in my mind; forever in my heart. It seems that most matter how much I try I can’t get rid of you. You are a thorn, stuck in deep; painful to remove, and even when I do, still I’ll bleed and feel the soreness. It will take time, but it will heal. No matter the pain, I will still dare to pick roses.