Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

The gap that’s opened I’m filling with fairy dust, hues of the heart and a joy for life what was… I invite to exit right quietly, in shades of black and white.

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

It’s not the adversity, but how you face it.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem!

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

We are free to yield to truth.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.