Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man is always willing to be little.

Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk but after the counsel of his own bosom.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself… Serve and thou shall be served.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward "signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men," is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.

Man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks he is!

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.

And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day.

Genius appeals to the future.

Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall...

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this. The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'Always do what you are afraid to do.'

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; … he learns his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.

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.

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

The first wealth is health.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matter compared to what lies within us.

The soul refuses limits & always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism.

We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.

Envy is ignorance. Imitation is suicide.

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

AS to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

I care not so much what I am to others as to what I am to myself.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

Greatness once and forever has down with opinion.

When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Genius appeals to the future.

For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

The ancestor to every action is a thought.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

There is only one way in which you can ‘change your luck’ and that is by altering your thoughts.

A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work—declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life, nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line and say that society can never prosper but must always be bankrupts, until every man does that which he was created to do.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished--by fear…be honest with a man and you have no fear. Try to deceive and the relationship deteriorates.

There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

The ancestor to every action is a thought.

Do not go where the pay may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!

All life is an experiment, the more experiments the better.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

Who you are shouts so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say.

The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

When God lets loose a great thinker on this planet, then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; nor any literary reputation or the so-called eternal names of fame that many not be refused and condemned.

Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.

To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will...

Whoso would ever be a man, must be a noncomformist.

There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.

How much of human life is lost in waiting!

The hero is no braver than the ordinary man. But he is braver for five minutes longer.

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.