Ralph Waldo Emerson

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

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

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

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

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

A perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle; …they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; …those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It comes at last-the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them-and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, …a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.

We all really basically have a lot of magic … it’s only those of us that choose to accept it that really understand it.

The stars are the apexes of what triangles!

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

How you gonna win if you ain’t right within?