Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher, lecturer, and essayist wrote Nature (1836). He became one of America's best known and best loved 19th century figures.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

What you are comes to you.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

We are wiser than we know.

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.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.