Ralph Waldo Emerson

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, It would be to use the phrase ‘f**k off’ much more frequently.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.