Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.... Serve and thou shall be served

Those roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. ...But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eyes laments the past, or heedless of the riches that surround him, stands tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist... No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature... I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions... What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

It is easy in the world to live after the world''s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

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.