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An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Related topics: Wisdom Life Human-Nature Psychology
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 
When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
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
Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every wall is a door.
- 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
When we have arrived at the question,
the answer is already near.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants,
and to serve them one's self?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be great is to be misunderstood.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
People do not seem to realize that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
- 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 reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
- 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
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Build a better mousetrap
and the world will beat a path to your door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
With the past, I have nothing to do;
nor with the future. I live now.
- 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
A great man is always willing to be little.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity,
but in being uninteresting.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are by nature observers, and thereby learners.
That is our permanent state.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals,
that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The revelation of thought takes men
out of servitude into freedom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of the shadows of life are caused
by standing in our own sunshine.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is higher than intellect.
A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must be our own before we can be another's.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,
a possession for all time.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There comes a time in every man's education
when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance,
that imitation is suicide,
that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day
is the best day in the year.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give a boy address and accomplishments
and you give him the mastery
of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
you shall begin it serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man has his own courage,
and is betrayed because he seeks in himself
the courage of other persons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the quality of the moment,
not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
For every minute you remain angry,
you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man can... make a better mousetrap,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is the power to labor better and more availably.
Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust your instinct to the end,
though you can render no reason.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Getting old is a fascination thing.
The older you get, the older you want to get.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reason why men do not obey us,
is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are rich only through what we give,
and poor only through what we refuse.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the illusions of life is that the present hour
is not the critical, decisive hour.
Write it on your heart that
every day is the best day in the year.
No man has learned anything rightly,
until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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