Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius appeals to the future.

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

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.

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

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

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

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

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.

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

The ancestor to every action is a thought.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.

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

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

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

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.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

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

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.

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

There is one mind common to all men.

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.

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

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

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

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.

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

Fear is a great instructor.

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.

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

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.

The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.

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

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

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.

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.

Great men are they who see that spirituality is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world.

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

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

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

Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency.

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...

The measure of mental health is the disposition to see good everywhere.

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

Self-trust is the essence of heroism

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

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.

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 man needs to thank his faults.

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

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.

Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.

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

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

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

Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart.

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.

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

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

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

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

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

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

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 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.

The first wealth is health.

The years teach us much the days never knew.

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.

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.

The characteristic of genuine heroism, is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

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

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

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

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.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

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

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

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.

Genius appeals to the future.

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

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

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.

[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 force of character is cumulative.

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.

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

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

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