Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pride ruined the angels.

Difficulties exist to be surmounted.

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.

We are reformers in Spring and Summer; in Autumn and Winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.

No sensible person ever made an apology.

Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!

The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.

It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.

Discontent is want of self-discipline; it is infirmity of will.

To be simple is to be great.

It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

We never touch but at points.

Sorrow makes us all children again.

There are some men above grief and some men below it.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.

Excite the soul, and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear; the world itself loses its solidity, nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.

What is success? 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; That is to have succeeded.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but the 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.

The world belongs to the energetic.