WORDS OF WISDOM

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."

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

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

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

There is no beautifier of complexion, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

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

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

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

The only gift is a portion of thyself...the poet brings a poem, the shepherd his lamb...the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

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

All our progress is an unfolding like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether thy work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought. No matter how defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man.
-"Culture," The Conduct of Life

Begin and proceed on a settled and not-to-be-shaken conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well.
- Journals 1832

How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
- Journals 1833

The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.
- Journals 1833

The house praises the carpenter.
- Journals 1836

A man is not to aim at innocence any more than he is to aim at hair; but he is to keep it.
- Journals, 1855

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

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

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 it possesses.

Who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying.

All that I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all that I have not seen.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. (on Abraham Lincoln)

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. 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.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Congratulate yourself if you've done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

There is nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that it's gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

Life is good only when it is magical and musical. A perfect timing and consent and when we do not anatomize it. You must hear the bird song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

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.

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.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

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

Children are all foreigners.

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

Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

I do not wish to treat friends daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.

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.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

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

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

Give all to love; obey thy heart.

Love and you shall be loved.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

My cow milks me.

The religion that is afraid of science dishoners God and commits suicide.

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious.

They are conservatives after dinner.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

The only reward of virtue is virtue.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Men are what their mothers made them.

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 with his friendship.