Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life too near paralyses art.

Our faith comes in moments… yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

Beauty rests on necessities.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

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.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature’s English comfort.

Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.