Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

All colors will agree in the dark.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, Sir, I am your most humble servant. You are not his most humble servant. You may say, These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times. You don’t mind the times … You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don’t think foolishly.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Property is organized robbery.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.