Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 2

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

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.

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.

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

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

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

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

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

You become what you think about all day long.

Envy is ignorance,
Imitation is Suicide.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

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.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

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

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.