Ralph Waldo Emerson Motivational Quotations

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

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

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

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.

A good intention clothes itself with power.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of chance.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to leave the world a better place, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Children are all foreigners.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm.

The world belongs to the energetic.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

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.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.

Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.

Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.

Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Learn from it... tomorrow is a new day.

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.