Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

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

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

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

Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

With all the doubt, with every worry, with all the negativity that I mistook for honesty, it kept me blinded. Lying for so long, I fooled myself in believing it to be my reality. And living in that world, it was my reality. Like when the lights come on, or when the curtains are drawn back, the shock of the clarity, meant I had to adjust to the new world I was witnessing. An honest; good with the bad, world, that I can thrive and grow in.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

The eye is the jewel of the body.