Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Money often costs too much.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

Softness has such a power to it. When you choose to soften into something, it relaxes, opens, tension releases. Stuck energy flows like blood coursing through veins, bringing much needed oxygen. Life force and warmth enters, connection is rekindled. Find the trust you need to allow softness in; it really is healing.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.