Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

The years teach much what the days never knew.

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

The disciplined are free.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.