Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Always do what you are afraid to do. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself. Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. Every artist was first an amateur. All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness. Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship. Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character. What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. Life is a journey, not a destination. The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. The only way to have a friend is to be one. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt 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. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true. A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air. 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. 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. Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you. 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. If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. The earth laughs in flowers. A great man is always willing to be little. Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late It is not the length of life, but the depth. You become what you think about all day long. Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself. There is creative reading as well as creative writing. In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him. Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much. Nature and Books belong to the eyes that see them. That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased. Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue... For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else. This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life. Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy. In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes. The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without. Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine. All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. You are constantly invited to be what you are. Some books leave us free and some books make us free. He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. Love, and you shall be loved. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. Beauty without expression is boring. Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings. We are always getting ready to live but never living. None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. Fear always springs from ignorance. The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret. 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. Be good to your work, your word, and your friend. Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. The years teach much the days never know. When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying. Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest. The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes. Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it. Every wall is a door. Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams. If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore. To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic. Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. 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. Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny. Imitation is suicide. The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine. What I need is someone who will make me do what I can. 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. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship. It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. 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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803 - 1882