Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says.

A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.