Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We would willingly know the future too, and propose to know it.”

“What help from these fineness or pedantries? What help from thought?”

“Life is not dialectics.”

“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

“It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high.”

“Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium.”

“Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man.”

“Without any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we should not postpone and refer and wish.”

“Here we are, and if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best.”

“See the play from the pit; do not assume to be the author.”

“To the well-born child, all the virtues are natural, and not painfully acquired.”

“Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds.”

“In the morning I awake and find the old world, wife, babes, and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off.”

“If we will be strong with His strength, we cannot fail.”

“Nature is the symbol of spirit.”

“In the woods, we return to reason and faith.”

“Standing on the bare ground — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space — all mean egotism vanishes.”

“I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all.”

“The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”