Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an American essayist and lecturer, and the central figure of Transcendentalism. He left the ministry to write and speak publicly, and his essays Nature and Self-Reliance laid the groundwork for American thinking about the individual and their relation to society.
About this theme: Mindfulness
Mindfulness has become close to an industry in recent decades, which makes it easy to forget how old the practice is. Buddhist texts on attention are two and a half millennia old, and the Stoics kept journals for the same purpose: to notice what is actually happening in the mind before acting on it. Marcus Aurelius wrote his notes for himself, in the morning, before the day's duties.
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
More on Mindfulness
- True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.— Seneca
- The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.— Michel de Montaigne
- A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.— Blaise Pascal
- The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life.— Euripides