Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

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

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up

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.

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 is what is against it.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Books are for nothing but to inspire

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.

Love, and you shall be loved.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.

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

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.