Why should I know Ralph Waldo Emerson?

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

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

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

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

“Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.”

“Envy is ignorance,
Imitation is suicide.”

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

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

“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.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; 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.”

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

“Its the not the destination, It's the journey.”

“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.”

“Meet your failure nobly, and it will not differ from success.”

“Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.”

“Nothing external to you has any power over you.”

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

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

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

“Postpone not your life.”

“Science does not know its debt to imagination.”

“So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.”

“Successful is the person who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of children, who leaves the world better than they found it, who has never lacked appreciation for the earth's beauty, who never fails to look for the best in others or give the best of themselves.”

“The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.”

“The first wealth is health.”

“The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

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

“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.”

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.”

“The years in your life are less important than the life in your years.”

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

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

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

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

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

“We become what we think about all day long.”

“We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

“We must be our own before we can be another’s.”

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

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

“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.”

“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

“Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?”

“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.”

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.”