Ralph Waldo Emerson

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

We hate the kindness which we understand.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

How can one be well…when one suffers morally?

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

I am the flame, electric blue, lightening, razor-like, renewing my spirit. Heart beating in time to the earth’s rhythm and expanse of black ink sky, overreaching eternal. My fingertips spark with seeds of creation, fireworks coloring canvas, beckoned by this light that lifts me.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.