A great man is always willing to be little.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every wall is a door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of the shadows of life are caused
by standing in our own sunshine.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom has its root in goodness,
not goodness its root in wisdom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
For everything you have missed,
you have gained something else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. -
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have 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 reason why men do not obey us,
is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There comes 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 or for worse as his portion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we have arrived at the question,
the answer is already near.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing you fear,
and death of fear is certain.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The years teach much which the days never know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is all gates, all opportunities,
strings of tension waiting to be struck.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Unless you try to do something
beyond what you have already mastered,
you will never grow.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals,
that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Music takes us out of the actual
and whispers to us dim secrets
that startle our wonder as to who we are.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are wiser than we know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
This time, like all times, is a very good one,
if we but know what to do with it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
For everything you have missed,
you have gained something else,
and for everything you gain,
you lose something else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The fox has many tricks.
The hedgehog has but one.
But that is the best of all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day
is the best day in the year.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To leave the world a bit better ...
to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
People that seem so glorious are all show;
underneath they are like everyone else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little minds have little worries,
big minds have no time for worries.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you are comes to you.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't 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 coarse,
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.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Words are also actions,
and actions are a kind of words.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be great is to be misunderstood.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants,
and to serve them one's self?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues
have never been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust your instinct to the end,
though you can render no reason.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
People do not seem to realize that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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