Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

You come to realize that only one person can tell you what's expected of you, and that's you.

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

Be yourself, take control of your life.

I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

It is only through hard work and awareness that we can truly own our identity.

The rule for every man is, not to depend on the education which other men have prepared for him-not even to consent to it; but to strive to see things as they are, and to be himself as he is. Defeat lies in self-surrender.

Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

There are things one must do for oneself.

Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is 'mine,' and it is not a general one, but is - 'unique,' as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!

I think that's important for all ages, to not be afraid of being an individual. I grew up on my own, as an only child, so early on I think I was quite capable of making decisions by myself and being an individual.

People always tell me, 'Reinvent yourself, re-this, re-whatever.' I haven't reinvented myself. It's an honest evolution. I've always been authentic.

Let every man feel that he is the architect and builder of his own life, and that he proposes to make a success of it by working.

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

What I'd like to get across is try your best to be yourself. I realize there are those who are much further along than you are; there are stars, but learn to be who you are and to play yourself. Be confident in that fact.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

You have to assert something about yourself in order to be yourself.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

I pattern my actions and life after what I want. No two people are alike. You might admire attributes in others, but use these only as a guide in improving yourself in your own unique way. I don't go for carbon copies. Individualism is sacred!

You don't have to burn books, you don't have to rebel against teachers to rebel; to rebel is to truly own your own self.