Authors — Quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes: 116

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Pictures must not be too picturesque.
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Emerson in His Journals
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Every artist was first an amateur.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Self Reliance
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
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.
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
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.
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
It is not the length of life, but the depth.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Self-Reliance
You become what you think about all day long.
Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.
Self-Reliance
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Emerson in His Journals
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
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.
Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.
Self-Reliance and Other Essays
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
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.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
Nature and Selected Essays
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.