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The 50 Best Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Read this famous writer’s quotes that will inspire your life

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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American writer, poet and philosopher that was the leader of the transcendentalist movement in the 19th century. He elaborated many essays and lectures that have left us plenty of inspirational quotes that can be used in our every day life.

Emerson is a referent of individualism, which focuses on the individual and in achieving our goals all by ourselves, because of our value and worth without depending on anyone else. If you want motivation to reach your goals, read the 50 best Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes that will motivate you and give you the autonomy in life that you need.

1“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

2“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

3“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

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

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

6“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

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

8“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

9“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”

10“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

11“Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

12“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

13“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

14“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”

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

16“Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.”

17“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

18“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

19“Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding.”

20“Every artist was first an amateur.”

21“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”

22“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

23“It is not the length of life, but the depth.”

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

25“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”

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

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

28“The earth laughs in flowers.”

29“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

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

31“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.”

32“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

33“Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.”

34“A great man is always willing to be little.”

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

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

37“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

38“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

39"It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.”

40“Beauty without expression is boring.”

41“When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.”

42“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.”

43“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”

44“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.”

45“Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”

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

47“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”

48“Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.”

49“Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.”

50“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”