Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

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

I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.

Every wall is a door.

Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

Imitation is suicide.