“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (Emerson)
“Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.” (Emerson)
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” (Emerson)
“I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred none are profane I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.” (Emerson)
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” (Emerson)
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.” (Emerson)
“No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.” (Emerson)
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” (Emerson)
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” (Emerson)
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” (Emerson)
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy 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.” (Emerson)
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” (Emerson)
“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” (Emerson)
