Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dice of God are always loaded.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

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

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium – indifference.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.