Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

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

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

When you know better you do better.

I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Seek not to be Rich, but Happy. The one lies in Bags, the other in Content: which Wealth can never give.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

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

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high.

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.