Ralph Waldo Emerson

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

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

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

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.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

Anger makes dull men witty – but it keeps them poor.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

My favorite nightcap, after all this time, is still the cocktail of you.