Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

The years teach much what the days never knew.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.