Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.

I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people

Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

Do Good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

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

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words – 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

We should come home from adventures and perils and discoveries with new experiences and character.

The sun is but a morning star.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.