Emerson Inspirational Quotes

Always do what you are afraid to do.

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; Whose life was an inspiration; Whose memory a benediction.

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

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.

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

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

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

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

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

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

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

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn

You become what you think about all day long.

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.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up

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

When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.

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

Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

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

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

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

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

We are wiser than we know.

Books are for nothing but to inspire

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

The only true gift is a portion of thyself.

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.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

The sun shines today also.

Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.

To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.

We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.

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

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

Practice radical humility." He (or she)who masters the art of humility cannot be humiliated...

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.

She shows us only surfaces but Nature is a million fathoms deep.

There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

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

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

The day is always (hers or) his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.

Some roses grow through concrete. Remember that.

All great speakers were bad speakers at first.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

Work and learn in evil days, in insulted days, in days of debt and depression and calamity. Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken.

In the woods is perpetual youth. In the woods we return to faith and reason.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; Our valors are our best gods.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing do it with all your might. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. ~

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.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.

Over time, I came to realize that this was the point of reading Emerson and, for that matter, Thoreau and Margaret Fuller and all the rest of them. The reason to read the American Transcendentalists wasn’t to hang on to their every word, but to be inspired by them. This early American philosophy was about inspiration, about moving beyond the inert and deadening ways of the past. *

Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. (Despite) all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether... The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough

Then [good manners] must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

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

I become the transparent eyeball...

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. -Tallulah Bankhead (1903-68) How much of human life is lost in waiting. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) Only a life lived for others is worth living. -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

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

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

Este momento es tan bueno como cualquier momento de la eternidad

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

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson-

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

Transcendentalists believe that our minds are always open to a new inflowing of light and power from the Source. This is called inspiration.

for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire.

Emerson once remarked that if I should encounter a band of Dervishes, five minutes of my nagging would unquestionably inspire even the mildest of them to massacre me....

The world laughs in flowers.

What you're afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do.

True courage is not ostentatious; men who wish to inspire terror seem thereby to confess themselves cowards. Why do they rely on it, but because they know how potent it is with themselves?

He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, ⎯ is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

Inspiring passion and action—this is the test of true preaching. True preaching is practical—concerned with day-to-day living in light of the soul. It’s focus is not on the distant past or an imaginary future, but on the here and now.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

La única persona que estás destinado a ser es la persona que decides ser

Do the things you fear to do and death of fear will be certain.

Y se expresaron con sus propias palabras, no con las palabras de los demás hombres

You Life is a progress, and not a station.

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

The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

إننا نتحول إلى ما نفكر فيه طوال اليوم

I hate quotes: tell me what you know.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-pulling, but guiding, instructive, and inspirational--a south wind and not an east wind.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.                Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded

When an artist runs out of inspiration or a scholar wearies of books, they always have the ability to live. Character is more important than intellect. Life is primary; our thoughts about it are secondary.

In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. Every variety of power was in this orator, -- logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy. The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to Thomas Paine of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from Paine's pen to Ingersoll's tongue. The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos. {Conway's thoughts on the great Robert Ingersoll}

Writing that loses its elegance loses its significance. Moreover, it is no simple matter to be both inspirational and moderate. Emerson's trick - I use the word in no belittling sense - was to fill his essays with "things" and at the same time that his subject was conceptual, invisible, no more than a glimmer, but a glimmer of immeasurable sharpness inside the eye. So he attached the common word to the startling idea. ... and suddenly that lite mystical practice seems clearer than ever before, and possible to each of us.

Transcendentalists assert that the human mind is the same—and just as open to inspiration—across all boundaries of geography, culture, race, and religion. They celebrate the expansive, daring explorations of the Eastern mind, and find much wisdom in Hinduism and Buddhism.

What is the right use of books? For inspiration. Books exist for your benefit, not you for theirs. Your most precious possession is your own soul. Better to never see a book than to have it pull you out of your orbit, so that your life now revolves around that book instead of around your own soul.

let him look into [fear's] eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, - see the whelping of this lion, - which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior.

The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer’s work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. “All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain,” said Emerson. “They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them.”36

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of the mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.

owning states, since he was an ardent Abolitionist). Among those directly inspired by Emerson’s lectures and writings were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (the two greatest American poets of the Nineteenth Century), Henry David Thoreau (the greatest literary observer of nature), John Muir (wilderness advocate and “Father of the National Parks”), and William James (pioneering psychologist and founder of Pragmatic philosophy). He also met President Abraham Lincoln and encouraged him to declare an end to slavery, which he did the next year with the Emancipation Proclamation. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reach was vast, and his influence has continued to reverberate through every succeeding generation.

Dear Sir—I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy.… I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perceptions only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.… I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects. R.W. Emerson

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson ―

The principle that guides all true Conservatives (or should guide them) and makes their political attitude fool-proof is that enunciated by Emerson over a century ago, that "No institution will be better than the institutor". In other words, they should exercise that wise caution and hesitation in reform, which is inspired by a proper and tender regard for traditional usages and practices throughout the nation.

From Marcus Emerson: Stories – what an incredible way to open one’s mind to a fantastic world of adventure. It’s my hope that this story has inspired you in some way, lighting a fire that maybe you didn’t know you had. Keep that flame burning no matter what. It represents your sense of adventure and creativity, and that’s something nobody can take from you. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this book, I ask that you help spread the word by sharing it or leaving an honest review! - Marcus m@MarcusEmerson.com P.S. You’re awesome!

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The second main argument to support the idea that simple living enhances our capacity for pleasure is that it encourages us to attend to and appreciate the inexhaustible wealth of interesting, beautiful, marvelous, and thought-provoking phenomena continually presented to us by the everyday world that is close at hand. As Emerson says: “Things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. . . . This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.”47 Here, as elsewhere, Emerson elegantly articulates the theory, but it is his friend Thoreau who really puts it into practice. Walden is, among other things, a celebration of the unexotic and a demonstration that the overlooked wonders of the commonplace can be a source of profound pleasure readily available to all. This idea is hardly unique to Emerson and Thoreau, of course, and, like most of the ideas we are considering, it goes back to ancient times. Marcus Aurelius reflects that “anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure,” from the jaws of animals to the “distinct beauty of old age in men and women.”48 “Even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charms, its own attractiveness,” he observes, citing as an example the way loaves split open on top when baking.49 With respect to the natural world, celebrating the ordinary has been a staple of literature and art at least since the advent of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth wrote three separate poems in praise of the lesser celandine, a common wildflower; painters like van Gogh discover whole worlds of beauty and significance in a pair of peasant boots; many of the finest poems crafted by poets like Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Seamus Heaney take as their subject the most mundane objects, activities, or events and find in these something worth lingering over and commemorating in verse: a singing thrush, a snowy woods, a fish, some chilled plums, a patch of mint. Of course, artists have also celebrated the extraordinary, the exotic, and the magnificent. Homer gushes over the splendors of Menelaus’s palace; Gauguin left his home country to seek inspiration in the more exotic environment of Tahiti; Handel composed pieces to accompany momentous ceremonial occasions. Yet it is striking that a humble activity like picking blackberries—the subject of well-known poems by, among others, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Richard Wilbur—appears to be more inspirational to modern poets, more charged with interest and significance, than, say, the construction of the world’s tallest building, the Oscar ceremonies, the space program, or the discovery of DNA’s molecular structure. One might even say that it has now become an established function of art to help us discover the remarkable in the commonplace

I have learned to accept and appreciate beauty as it is, without always having to reason why. As Ralph Waldo Emerson eloquently conveyed in his poem ‘The Rhodora’ (1834), ‘If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty has its own excuse for being.

Even Margaret’s beloved Wordsworth fell short on the issue; for him, she quoted ruefully, the ideal woman should not be “Too bright and good / For Human nature’s daily food.” Margaret drew on examples from ancient myth, wherein “the idea of female perfection is as fully presented as that of male,” to show that women had been accorded greater respect in earlier times. In Egyptian mythology, “Isis is even more powerful than Osiris,” and “the Hindoo goddesses reign on the highest peaks of sanctification.” In Greek myth, “not only Beauty, Health and the Soul are represented under feminine attributes, but the Muses, the inspirers of all genius,” and “Wisdom itself . . . are feminine.” Margaret’s dream was to bring the dispirited “individual man” together with the disempowered woman—unite the two sides of the Great Hall’s classroom—and create, by merging the best attributes of each, “fully” perfected souls. Then, a nation of men and women will for the first time exist, she might have said, amending Waldo Emerson’s visionary claim.

literature; Emerson, in religion and philosophy. Rivalrous themselves, none of the three men trusted or even much liked one another. But all three were comfortable in the Peabody sisters’ front parlor and found inspiration there. In the back parlor, two of them married Peabody women. Marriage was never

priestly intermediation, and which brought their owner face to face with God? What caused the wildfire influence of Rousseau but the assurance he gave that man's nature was in harmony with the nature of things, if only the paralyzing corruptions of custom would stand from between? How did Kant and Fichte, Goethe and Schiller, inspire their time with cheer, except by saying, "Use all your powers; that is the only obedience the universe exacts"? And Carlyle with his gospel of work, of fact, of veracity, how does he move us except by saying that the universe imposes no tasks upon us but such as the most humble can perform? Emerson's creed that everything that ever was or will be is here in the enveloping now; that man has but to obey himself,—"He who will rest in what he is, is a part of destiny,"—is in like manner nothing but an exorcism of all scepticism as to the pertinency of one's natural faculties. In a word, "Son of Man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak unto thee!" is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs have helped the disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the greater part of his rational need.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature but every end is a beginning  . . .  and under every deep a lower deep opens.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think the right amount

As one writer expresses it, "We often form our opinions on the slightest evi- dence, yet we are inclined to cling to them with grim tenacity." There are two reasons for this. When we have formed an opinion on anything, the chances are that we have communicated it to some one, and have thereby committed ourselves to that side. Now to reverse an opinion is to confess that we were previously wrong. To reverse an opinion is to lay ourselves open to the charge of inconsistency. To be inconsistent is to admit that our judgments are human and fallible — this is the last thing we can ever think of. "Inconsistency," said Emerson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." And if by this he meant inconsistency in the sense of changing opinions already formed, we must agree with him.

Third places remain upbeat because of the limited way in which the participants are related. Most of the regulars in a third place have a unique and special status with regard to one another. It is special in that such people have neither the blandness of strangers nor that other kind of blandness, which takes zest out of relationships between even the most favorably matched people when too much time is spent together, when too much is known, too many problems are shared, and too much is taken for granted. Many among the regulars of a third place are like Emerson's "commended stranger" who represents humanity anew, who offers a new mirror in which to view ourselves, and who thus breathes life into our conversation. In the presence of the commended stranger, wrote Emerson, "We talk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, our dumb devil has taken leave for a time. For long hours, we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that those who sit by, of our kinsfolk, and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual power.: The magic of commended strangers fades as one comes to know them better. They are fallible. They have problems and weaknesses like everyone else and, as their luster fades, so does their ability to inspire our wit, memory, and imagination. The third place, however, retards that fading process, and it does so by keeping the lives of most of its regulars disentangled. One individual may enjoy the company of others at a mutual haunt for years without ever having seen their spouses; never having visited their homes or the places where they work; never having seen them against the duller backdrop of their existence on the "outside." Many a third place regular represents conversationally and socially what the mistress represents sexually. Much of the lure and continuing allure of the mistress rests in the fact that only pleasure is involved. There is no rising from bed to face the myriad problems that husband and wife must share and that contaminates their lives and their regard for one another. Third places surely contain many of these "mistresses of conversation," people who meet one another only to share good times and scintillating activities and with whom good times and scintillation thus come to be associated. Out of tacit agreement not to share too much, the excitement attaching the commended stranger is preserved among third place regulars. What, after all, are such incidentals as home and family and job when the nature of life itself, the course of the world in modern times, or the booted ball that cost a victory in last night's game are on the agenda?

Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson     Dream

Bucolic peace is not my ambience, and the giving of tea parties is by no means my favorite amusement. In fact, I would prefer to be pursued across the desert by a band of savage Dervishes brandishing spears and howling for my blood. I would rather be chased up a tree by a mad dog, or face a mummy risen from its grave. I would rather be threatened by knives, pistols, poisonous snakes, and the curse of a long-dead king. Lest I be accused of exaggeration,.... Emerson once remarked that if I should encounter a band of Dervishes, five minutes of my nagging would unquestionably inspire even the mildest of them to massacre me....

Tradition as a Resource Although the making of a religion of one’s own can be satisfying, it can progress further and faster with the aid of the spiritual traditions. Your own spiritual path risks being too personal and limited. What resources do you have compared to the traditions that have thought of things you will never consider? They have refined ideas and images and teachings and moral guidelines expressed in elegant and inspiring ways. They have produced spiritual beauty of a kind no single person could ever create. Read Emerson’s journals and you find that he was reading Hafiz for months, and Thoreau’s homespun spiritual insights come wrapped in references from the Western and Eastern traditions.

Although the making of a religion of one’s own can be satisfying, it can progress further and faster with the aid of the spiritual traditions. Your own spiritual path risks being too personal and limited. What resources do you have compared to the traditions that have thought of things you will never consider? They have refined ideas and images and teachings and moral guidelines expressed in elegant and inspiring ways. They have produced spiritual beauty of a kind no single person could ever create. Read Emerson’s journals and you find that he was reading Hafiz for months, and Thoreau’s homespun spiritual insights come wrapped in references from the Western and Eastern traditions.

of a whole lot of books including the way popular DIARY OF A 6TH GRADE NINJA series, THE SUPER LIFE OF BEN BRAVER series, and the SECRET AGENT 6th GRADER series. His goal is to make money create children’s books that are funny and inspirational for kids of all ages – even the adults who never grew up. Marcus still dreams of becoming an astronaut and WALKING ON THE SUN, LIKE WHAT?? THAT’S NOT EVEN POSSIBLE.

You have the ability to decide what you think. And since the result of your life depends on your thoughts, I think it’s the most important thing in life. When we improve the way we think, nothing is impossible to achieve. That simple realization changes everything. Many great thinkers have written about the importance of thoughts. But William James’ godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who also inspired James a great deal, put it most simply: “You become what you think about all day long.

As you’ll read in these stories, almost to a person these subjects were highly intelligent and educated people of science. But it wasn’t until after their NDE experience did they fully begin to understand the power of the super-conscious mind and its existence outside the human brain. The super-conscious mind is the source of all pure creativity. It is the super-conscious mind that is functioning at the creation of anything that is completely new in the universe. The super-conscious mind is tapped into and used by all the great inventors, writers, artists and composers of history on a regular basis, right up to the present day. Every great work of art or creativity is infused with super-conscious energy. Your super-conscious mind can access every piece of information stored in your conscious and subconscious minds. It can also access data and ideas outside your own experience, because it actually lies outside your human mind. This is why it is called a form of universal intelligence. You will often get ideas that come to you from far beyond you. It is not unusual for two people separated by thousands of miles of distance to come up with the same idea at the same time. When you are well-attuned to another person, such as your spouse or mate, you will often have thoughts identical to him or her at the same time during the day, and you will only find out that you had reached the same conclusion when you compare notes hours later. This is an example of your super-conscious mind at work. Sometimes when you are with other positive, goal-oriented people, your combined super-conscious minds will form a higher mind that you can all tap into. This is why, when you are involved in a conversation or listening to a lecture, ideas and inspirations will often leap into your mind that have no direct connection to what is being discussed. But those ideas and inspirations may be exactly what you need at that moment to move you forward on your journey. Because of your super-conscious powers, virtually anything that you can hold in your mind on a continuing basis, you can have. Emerson wrote, “A man becomes what he thinks about, most of the time.” Earl Nightingale wrote, “You become what you think about.” In the Bible it says that, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.” And this law of sowing and reaping refers to mental states; to your thoughts. Of course, there is a potential danger in the use of your super-conscious mind. It is like fire - a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. If you use it improperly, and think negative, fearful thoughts, your super-conscious mind will accept your thoughts as a command and go to work to materialize them into your reality.

You may be saying to yourself: "So long as I stick to classics I cannot go wrong." You can go wrong. You can, while reading naught but very fine stuff, commit the grave error of reading too much of one kind of stuff. Now there are two kinds, and only two kinds. ... They are the inspiring kind and the informing kind. No other genuine division exists in literature. Emerson, I think, first clearly stated it. His terms were the literature of "power" and the literature of "knowledge." … You must avoid giving undue preference to the kind in which the inspiring quality predominates or to the kind in which the informing quality predominates. Too much of the one is enervating; too much of the other is desiccating. If you stick exclusively to the one you may become a mere debauchee of the emotions; if you stick exclusively to the other you may cease to live in any full sense.

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

In early Leninist terminology, the geographical opposition of "city" (proletariat) versus "countryside" (peasant) was often expressed in terms of "consciousness" versus "spontaneity." Consciousness in this Marxist sense meant not individual creativity, inspiration, or (as it often did for Dostoevsky) the freedom of personal will and the responsibility of choice, but was applied more narrowly, to mean an awareness of the dialectical shape of history and the inevitable victory of the proletariat. Opposed to this party-minded awareness was "spontaneity": people reacting anarchically, instinctively, out of their immediate anger or blind need, peasants burning manor houses ... Many believed that a symbiotic relation between these two forces was possible, at the level of the individual body as well as the body politic.

I think it’s the most important thing in life. When we improve the way we think, nothing is impossible to achieve. That simple realization changes everything. Many great thinkers have written about the importance of thoughts. But William James’ godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who also inspired James a great deal, put it most simply: “You become what you think about all day long.

A book is a gift you can open again and again." – Garrison Kellor "Some books leave us free and some books make us free." – Ralph Waldo Emerson "Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers." – Charles W. Eliot "A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors." – Charles Baudelaire "There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things." – Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot "Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you." – Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind "Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head." – Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies... The man who never reads lives only one." – George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons "Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work." – Khaled Hosseini "Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while." – Malorie Blackman "That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." – F. Scott Fitzgerald "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." – Frederick Douglass "Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere." – Jean Rhys "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." – Joan Didion, The White Album

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.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Christians worship Jesus as the only incarnation of God. But the divine soul, as Jesus taught, is within all and favors no one. By elevating the person of Jesus above his message, the message has been lost. And by depicting Christ as a king who rules by threats of hellfire, Christianity turned the friend of humanity into a despot. Jesus is a mediator between God and humanity so far as he points us to truth and we put it into practice. “Love your neighbor as yourself”; “Love your enemies”; “Judge not, lest you be judged”; “Forgive, and you will be forgiven”; “Do to others as you would have them do to you;” “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself.” If the words Jesus and stories of his life awaken you to the divine soul within and inspire you to transform your life, he will have “saved” you by helping you to save yourself. When Jesus says, “I am the all,” he means, “I have identified myself with the all.” When he says, in the Gospel of Thomas, “Split the stick, you will find me there; lift the stone, and there I am,” this does not refer to his physical body; it refers instead to that which he is, and you are. And, of course, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Who is in Heaven? God. Where is God? Within you.

The soul discerns what is true, independent of any tradition, institution, or book. Our religions are storehouses of secondhand insights, useful for inspiration but harmful when substituted for firsthand communion with the divine soul.  To the religiously devout, this may seem like a dangerous, revolutionary idea. But really, the truth of the soul is the oldest of revelations.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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. Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

On the most important theological matters, most Americans were not self-reliant. In fact, Americans were dependent on pulpit preachers and pushy philosophers to determine their relationship to the divine for them. Americans had ceded their agency to the frock and cowl. Emerson broke from the Christianity of his day because it disenfranchised individual spiritual seekers and prevented Americans from realizing their full potential for inspiration—a word derived from the Latin inspiratus and that, in the mystical tradition, means literally “to be filled with the breath of the divine.

My world view is somewhat unique. I have learned from many great philosophers including Plato, Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Darwin, Tagore, Emerson, and many more.

Elizabeth might revere Waldo Emerson as an oracle of truth, but Waldo held Elizabeth in high esteem too. Her 1830 translation of de Gérando’s Self-Education inspired him, and her manuscript translation of the French mystic Guillaume Oegger’s True Messiah had provided “good things” as well. At this formative time in his life, Waldo Emerson found in Elizabeth Peabody both a woman who knew the ins and outs of the publishing world—she would advise him on dealings with their mutual publisher, James Munroe—and a raconteur with the “authority of a learned professor or high literary celebrity in her talk.” For the most part, as Elizabeth had intuited, Waldo was able to disregard the less compelling aspects of her personality that, to a man whose feminine ideal was still the nineteen-year-old invalid bride he had lost to tuberculosis, were inclined to “offend,” and accept her as a fellow being of “infinite capacity.” In

The lover of nature is he who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

SEPTEMBER 25 GROWTH OF PEOPLE = GROWTH OF COMPANY People are the principal asset of any company, whether it makes things to sell, sells things made by other people, or supplies intangible services. Nothing moves until your people can make it move. In actual studies of leadership in American business, the average executive spends three-fourths of his working time dealing with people. The largest single cost in most business is people. The largest, most valuable asset any company has is its people. All executive plans are carried out, or fail to be carried out, by people. According to William J. H. Boetcker, people divide themselves into four classes: 1. Those who always do less than they are told 2. Those who will do what they are told, but no more 3. Those who will do things without being told 4. Those who will inspire others to do things It’s up to you. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Trust men and they will be true to you: treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” —Developing the Leader Within You CULTIVATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT INSPIRES YOUR PEOPLE TO DO GREAT THINGS.

Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive

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

His goal is to make money create children’s books that are funny and inspirational for kids of all ages

Coleridge’s writings introduced the Jena Set to English readers but some thirty years later also to American thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose own philosophy would become infused with the ideas of ‘this admirable Schelling’, as he called him. Inspired, many of the American Transcendentalists then set out to learn German so that they too could read the Jena Set’s works in the original and learn about ‘this strange genial poetic comprehensive philosophy’, as Emerson described it. Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the Transcendentalists insisted, were the ‘great thinkers of the world’, and as important as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Leibniz.

POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe.

Power in the Catalogue is imagination, Emerson. The ability to create. Not destroy. The Librarian who opens doors to other worlds—new ideas and possibilities—that person moves mountains. I would go so far as to say that person could rearrange the stars in the sky out there.

spirit of man soon discovers that the powers of darkness are not to be conquered by violence, by battle against the men possessed of them, but by faith in the final triumph of the Good, by submission to Fate, by endurance of what can be borne, by reverence towards God, and lastly by mercy towards men. The soul thus discovers its true haven; it lays down the sword; its voice calls no longer to strife, but to peace; it now inspires and uplifts, and Greek literature ends with Socrates and Plato, Rome with Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, England with Carlyle and Ruskin, America with Emerson, and Germany with Goethe.

I thought it was this fair mystery, whose foundations are hidden in eternity, which made the basis of human society, and of law; and that to pretend anything else, as that the acquisition of property was the end of living, was to confound all distinctions, to make the world a greasy hotel, and, instead of noble motives and inspirations, and a heaven of companions and angels around and before us, to leave us in a grimacing menagerie of monkeys and idiots.

The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the Creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That is not an inspiration, which we owe to narcotics, but some counterfeit excitement and fury.