Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Blame is safer than praise.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

Right is right even if everyone is against it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

Softness has such a power to it. When you choose to soften into something, it relaxes, opens, tension releases. Stuck energy flows like blood coursing through veins, bringing much needed oxygen. Life force and warmth enters, connection is rekindled. Find the trust you need to allow softness in; it really is healing.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

If you live for people’s acceptance, you’ll die from their rejections.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

Haven’t you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

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

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.