Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

As you get older, you realize that no one has all the answers. It turns out that life is an exercise in living with the certainty of uncertainty. – Jason Kilar

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

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

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.