What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
romantic · transcendentalism
Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1803–1882 · American
Concord essayist of self-reliance, inconsistency, and the day's work. The American sermon without the pulpit.
It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.
All life is an experiment.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
The years teach much which the days never knew.
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.
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon-balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you.
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.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
A strong nature feels itself brought into the world for its own development and not for the approbation of the public.