Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

When it is darkest, we can see the stars.

To believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism.

Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.

What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself especially how you choose to think about your situation.

When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; ... he learns his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.

Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.

Sitting back in the evening, stargazing and stroking your dog, is an infallible remedy.

What you persist in doing gets easier. The task hasn't changed, but your ability to do it has increased.

If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward.

Practice radical humility." He (or she)who masters the art of humility cannot be humiliated.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.