Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well — he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he’s the hell of a diplomat.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

We are wiser than we know.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.