Ralph Waldo Emerson Inspirational Quotes

Always do what you are afraid to do.

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.

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

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.

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.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

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.

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.

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.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

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.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.

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.

The sun shines today also.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All great speakers were bad speakers at first.

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.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay

Some roses grow through concrete. Remember that.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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. ~

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I become the transparent eyeball...

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

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.

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)

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

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.

The world laughs in flowers.

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?

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.

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

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}