Famous Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

“It is not the length of life, but the depth.”

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”

“Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.”

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”

“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”

“It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”

“Love, and you shall be loved.”

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”

“Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up”

“What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.”

“He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth.”

“Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.”

“The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.”

“So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.”

“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.”

“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”

“The life of truth is cold.”

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.”

“The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.”

“It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them that they are undeniably the work of a single all-knowing master.”

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

It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.

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

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

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

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

In the heart of every man lies the seed of chivalry, waiting to be cultivated by the deeds of honor.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

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

A true friend is somebody who can make us feel better no matter how bad things may be.

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

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.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

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

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