Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The sky was the color of hard crimson, dripping down a canvas, the moon splashed silver across red. Her soothing balm healing my soul in swathes of calmness, I breathe in her tides and let my body be washed ashore, lying in the sands of eternity.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, ‘Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

Knowledge is power.