“Character is higher than intellect.”
And
“I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.”
And
“A little integrity is better than any career. “
And
“Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.”
And
“What you do thunders so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”
And
“To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”
And
“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”
And
“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”
And
“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius. “
And
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
And
“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.”
And
“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.”
And
“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.”
And
“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
And
“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”
And
“A man is what he thinks about all day long.”
And
“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.”
And
“Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.”
And
“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”
And
“It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.”
And
“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
And
“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
And
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
And
“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.”
And
“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.”
And
“If the colleges were better, if they … had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, — if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, — we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.”
And
“Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as ‘glittering generalities,’ have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.”
And
“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”
And
“Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”
And
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
And
“The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.”
And
“But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.”
And
“There is 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 for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”
And
“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”
And
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.”
And
“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”
And
“Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.”
And
“Hence, the less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.”
And
“Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”
And
“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”
Wikipedia: Ralph Waldo Emerson
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