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Self reliance Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

77 Self reliance quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Self reliance quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Ralph Waldo Emerson urges us to trust ourselves instead of copying others. He says true wealth comes from owning each day and finding joy in the simple things, like the sun or a ship’s winding path. He also warns that following authority can dull our spirit.

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Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The virtue in most request is conformity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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This gives force to the strong -- that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart apoints.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves;…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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And truly it demands something god like in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. A…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity i am bought and sold; for them i will go…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

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If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular…

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If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the…

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A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his…

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Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

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“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book…

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The order of things consents to virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am; therefore, I had nothing better to do than to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson