Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

America is another name for opportunity.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature’s English comfort.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

I was the same old me. Just like the Moon yesterday. But because of all the other factors that came to play, the darkness, the brightness, the blood red color. They all were a reflection, a projection due to the perfect set of circumstances. The Moon was still the Moon. But it was still labeled the Super Blue Blood Moon, Just so we can have some understanding, but, again I’ll state, the Moon was still just the Moon, just like I was still just me. Whatever you project on me, and I reflect back, doesn’t then make me become a new person, it’s just a reflection of your projection. I am still just me.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

If we don’t occupy ourself with everything, then peaceful mind will have nowhere to abide.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg…

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.