What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.