Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Love, and you shall be loved."

"Always do what you are afraid to do."

"The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without."

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

"In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."

"If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore."

"Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself."

"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

"Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much."

"Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet."

"We are wiser than we know."

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you."

"The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is."

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."

"People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad."

"He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses."

"Every artist was first an amateur."

"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone."

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."