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Build a better mousetrap
and the world will beat a path to your door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Related topics: Wisdom Motivational
People only see what they are prepared to see.
- 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
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Every wall is a door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- 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
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
Shallow men believe in luck.
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- 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
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
The years teach much which the days never know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great man is always willing to be little.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Words are also actions,
and actions are a kind of words.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
With the past, I have nothing to do;
nor with the future. I live now.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make the most of yourself,
for that is all there is of you.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear always springs from ignorance.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust your instinct to the end,
though you can render no reason.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants,
and to serve them one's self?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we have arrived at the question,
the answer is already near.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort,
and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
- 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
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals,
that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The fox has many tricks.
The hedgehog has but one.
But that is the best of all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
As soon as there is life there is danger.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is all gates, all opportunities,
strings of tension waiting to be struck.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are rich only through what we give,
and poor only through what we refuse.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A chief event of life is the day in which
we have encountered a mind that startled us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity,
but in being uninteresting.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is higher than intellect.
A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day
is the best day in the year.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sum of wisdom is that
time is never lost that is devoted to work.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of the shadows of life are caused
by standing in our own sunshine.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
People do not seem to realize that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,
a possession for all time.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before we acquire great power
we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person,
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the uttermost meaning of the words,
thought is devout, and devotion is thought.
Deep calls unto deep.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The revelation of thought takes men
out of servitude into freedom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you are comes to you.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man in debt is so far a slave.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bad times have a scientific value.
These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be great is to be misunderstood.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
For everything you have missed,
you have gained something else.
- 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
For every minute you remain angry,
you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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