Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes: 47 on Self-Reliance
Emerson may be the most misattributed writer in American quote culture. The 47 quotes below are checked against his essays, Nature (1836), Self-Reliance (1841), The Conduct of Life (1860), and his journals.
Twenty-eight are matched word for word to his published text and carry the essay or journal date. Nineteen are marked “attributed”: they are widely credited to Emerson, but we could not find them in his writings, and you should treat them with care. At the end are three famous lines that are definitely not his, with their real authors.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Life is a journey, not a destination.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.
Character is higher than intellect.
Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously.
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force.
All mankind love a lover.
Imitation is suicide.
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
The years teach much which the days never know.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
The first wealth is health.
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Every artist was first an amateur.
It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Often attributed to Emerson — but not his
These circulate under the name above, but the record points elsewhere. Here is where each one actually comes from.
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What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Usually credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Actually: From Henry Stanley Haskins' Meditations in Wall Street (1940), published anonymously; the line was later credited to Emerson and Thoreau.
Research: quoteinvestigator.com
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For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Usually credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Actually: Not in Emerson's works. It first appears as anonymous folk wisdom in a 1936 newspaper humor column, "Office Cat," in the Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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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.
Usually credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Actually: Not Emerson. It derives from writer Leo Rosten, who said at the 1962 National Book Awards: "The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful..."
Research: quoteinvestigator.com