"Stand guard at the portal of your..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.”

“Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.”

“We pass for what we are.”

“We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.”

“Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.”

“The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.”

“Always will I dig for reasons to applaud; never will I scratch for excuses to gossip. When I am tempted to criticize I will bite on my tongue; when I am moved to praise I will shout from the roofs.”

“Measure your emotions. You don't need an atomic explosion for a minor point.”

“Control yourself. You'll spurt.”