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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes IndexAdversity"Every wall is a door." "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail." "Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." "Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Aging"The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles." "Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get." "As we grow old, the beauty steals inward." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Anger"For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Be YourselfMake the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. "Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason." "We must be our own before we can be another's." "Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique." "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Beauty"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting." "Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused." "Beauty without expression is boring." "Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait." "Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art." "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Character"Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think." "Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams." "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." "People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Children"We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body." "Children are all foreigners." "There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Common Sense"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes." "Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing." "Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Courage"A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before." "Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons." "There is always safety in valor." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Curiosity"Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret." "Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Enthusiasm"Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved." "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Excellence"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." "The reward of a thing well done is having done it." "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Faith"We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples." "The faith that stands on authority is not faith." "Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Fear"Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain." "Always do what you are afraid to do." "Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world." "He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Friends"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature." "Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed." "A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends." "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." "The only way to have a friend is to be one." "Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Giving"It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." "We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes God/Spirituality"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." "An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory." "Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact." "God enters by a private door into every individual." "Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods." "No man ever prayed heartily without learning something." "The highest revelation is that God is in every man." "We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Good Advice"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." "Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man." "Make yourself necessary to somebody." "Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great." "Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." "Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good." "Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy." "A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Health"The first wealth is health." "All diseases run into one, old age." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Hero"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer." "Every hero becomes a bore at last." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Illusion"There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream." "There is an optical illusion about every person we meet." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Imagination"In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine." "Science does not know its debt to imagination." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Insightful
"As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way." "Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well." "Cause and effect are two sides of one fact." "Every man I meet is in some way my superior." "Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated." "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." "For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else." "If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground." "In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise." "In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed." "Men are what their mothers made them." "Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural." "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." "People only see what they are prepared to see." "People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else." "Reality is a sliding door." "Revolutions go not backward." "Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." "The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence." "The greatest gift is a portion of thyself." "The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye." "The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself." "The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain." "There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount." "We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state." "What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us." "What you are comes to you." "Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Inspirationall"Hitch your wagon to a star." "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." "The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Leadership"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Life"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." "Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment." "As soon as there is life there is danger." "For every benefit you receive a tax is levied." "It is not length of life, but depth of life." "It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports." "Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day." "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." "There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere." "We are always getting ready to live but never living." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Love/Passion"All mankind love a lover." "It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances." "Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Money Matters"A man in debt is so far a slave." "A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles." "Money often costs too much." "The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit." "The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Nature"Earth laughs in flowers." "Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world." "Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff." "If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare." "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit." "Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same." "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." "The sky is the daily bread of the eyes." "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered." "When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Opportunity"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity." "Every wall is a door." "America is another name for opportunity." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Peace"Nobody can bring you peace but yourself." "Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." "The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Perseverance"Every artist was first an amateur." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Profound"Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be." "Nothing external to you has any power over you." "There is a tendency for things to right themselves." "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." "What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Strength"We gain the strength of the temptation we resist." "We acquire the strength we have overcome." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Success"Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events." "Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world." "A great man is always willing to be little." "To be great is to be misunderstood." "To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." "We aim above the mark to hit the mark." "Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Thought"A man is what he thinks about all day long." "Our best thoughts come from others." "The ancestor of every action is a thought." "The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Time"Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life." "The years teach much which the days never know." "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." "With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Truth"Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men." "Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Wisdom"Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know." "Genius always finds itself a century too early." "Some books leave us free and some books make us free." "The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common." "The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers." "The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work." "We are wiser than we know." "Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Worry"As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey." "Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries." Return to Index of Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes Return to Quotes by Famous People - from Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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The Dash
It's not the date you were born, or the date you died, that really matters. It's "the dash" between those years and what you do with it, to make a difference with your life.
