Ralph Waldo Emerson

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

Yet if today has no meaning, the past was a Blank and the future is a Chaos.

What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter’s evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream… I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people’s tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

Zen teaches that if we can open up to the inevitability of our demise, we can begin to transform and lighten up about it.

Accept the past for what it was. Acknowledge the present for what it is. Anticipate the future for what it can become.

Who is wise? He who learns from all men.

When you doubt the brilliance of your shine, I will take you through my darkness. I will show you where you shine the brightest.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.

I ask you to go back and read them over again, and this time answer “Self-acceptance was the foundation of the happiest time in your life and it was the engine that powered the train.

Youth should not be slandered. Boy nature and girl nature are less repressed and therefore more wholesome today than before. If they at times seem unimpressed by their elders, it is probably because we make a matter of authority what should be a matter of conference. These young people are new people sent to this scene by Destiny to take our places. They come with new visions to fulfill, new powers to exploit.

Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything.

Would you believe me if I said you were three shades short of all my favorite hues and that I’ve been trying for years to pick words from my garden throat in attempts to explain to you all the things I can’t explain. Or what if I said I have nothing to say other than I love you in the simplest of ways.

The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.

This ain’t my first rodeo son!

I don’t expect to retire. Every man must work, that’s his natural destiny.