Ralph Waldo Emerson

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible….except by getting off his back.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

The only wealth is life.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

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.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.