Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

Life too near paralyses art.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

It’s the ones that stayed after the Exodus, that I knew were real and could handle the truth; that would stay with me on my journey, for better or worse.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

You show your worth by what you seek! – Rumi

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.