Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Every wall is a door.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

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.

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

To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest. Always do what you are afraid to do.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.

Every great man is unique.

The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions.

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.

The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.

When it is darkest, we can see the stars.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly; the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.