When I was in college, I was required to take an English class, which for the most part, I hated. Too much of the class was taken up in reading authors who were boring (to be kind) and irrelevant. The one bright part of the class was a book we were required to purchase, and read excerpts from, which was the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Included in the volume were selections from his journals, which were not required for the class, but I found them fascinating, and still have a notebook filled with quotes copied from that book. (If you have never read his essay Compensation, it is worth the time to read it, the style is a bit archaic, but it is well worth reading in its entirety, you can find it here.)
Here are some of my favorite quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Every artist was first an amateur.
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Make yourself necessary to somebody.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
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