American Emerson

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"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

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

"Finish every 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."

"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."

"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."

"Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet."

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."

"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship."

"It is not the length of life, but the depth."

"The earth laughs in flowers."

"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true."

"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."

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

"Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude."

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another."

"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."

"Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life."

"Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect."

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

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