Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

The more experiments you make the better.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Remember who you are.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

There is nothing to fear except fear it’s self.

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

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.

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.

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

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Things do not change; we change.

O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.