Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

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

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

I am a sky gazer. The sky, it pulls at me. Its amazing eternal expanse of breathtaking beauty calls me back to my senses, stretches my awareness, soothes my eyes, opens my heart, stills me. I feel a soft soul longing to be up there, in the vastness, amongst the clouds that are alive and billow and skud and glow; metamorphosing from perfection into perfection. A constantly changing canvas brushed by magic.

Riches are for spending.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.