Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance Quotes

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

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.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

What I must do is all that concerns me,

The student is to read history actively not passively.

You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel.

A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.