Ralph Waldo Emerson

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defiant though he look he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

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

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

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

In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment.

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

Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

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

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.

There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty.

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.

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.

What is rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody?

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.

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.

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

There is no knowledge that is not power.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your mind.

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

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...

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.

There is one mind common to all men.

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.

Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.

Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today.

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." 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.

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

The force of character is cumulative.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism

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

Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

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

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

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

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

A great man is always willing to be little.

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

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

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

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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

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.

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

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

People only see what they are prepared to see.

No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Fear is a great instructor.

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

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

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.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Greatness once and forever has down with opinion.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.

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

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

Power is what they want, not candy—power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought; which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

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.

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

The ancestor to every action is a thought.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

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

Life consists of what a man is thinking about all day.

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.

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

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.

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

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

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.

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

Envy is ignorance. Imitation is suicide.

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

We can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable.

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

[on Thoreau:] He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.

The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.

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

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

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.

But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.

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

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

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