The only person you are destined 

to become is the person you decide to be.

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not go where the path may lead,

 go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts;

they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sun shines and warms and lights us

and we have no curiosity to know why this is so;

but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger,

and mosquitoes and silly people.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Men are respectable only as they respect”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The purpose of life is not to be happy.

It is to be useful, to be honorable,

to be compassionate,

to have it make some difference

that you have lived and lived well.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person,

hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach

of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs.

We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying

to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All sorts of things and weather

must be taken in together,

to make up a year.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Big jobs usually go to the men

who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every man has his own courage,and is betrayed

because he seeks in himself

the courage of other persons.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Religion is to do right.

It is to love,

it is to serve,

it is to think,

it is to be humble.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Peace cannot be achieved through violence,

it can only be attained through understanding.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What we have learned from others

becomes our own reflection.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What we have learned from others

becomes our own reflection.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nobody can bring you peace

but yourself.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead,

go instead where there is no path

and leave a trail.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Without a rich heart,

wealth is an ugly beggar.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun,

or it can insult like hissing or kicking;

or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness,

it can make the heart dance for joy.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be not the slave of your own past.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson