Ralph Waldo Emerson

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Your mind will enchain you. Your heart will set you free.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you’ll be free if you truly wish to be.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

I would live to study, and not study to live.

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.