Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Effort

• Love is our highest word and the synonym of God.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Motivational, Love Is, Effort

  "The Art Of Successful Living".

• We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another word for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race; and a literal, slavish following of precedents, as by a justice of the peace, is not for those who at this hour lead the AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  4th Of July, Patriotic, Opportunity

  "The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson".

• The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Perfect, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle (1841). “Essays”, p.139

• The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Motivational, Family, Best Effort

• The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Destiny, Effort, Our Destiny

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.325

• Get Health. No labor, effort nor exercise that can gain it must be grudged.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Health, Exercise, Effort

• We put our love where we have put our labor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Effort, Our Love, Work Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.161, Harvard University Press

• A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong . . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Powerful, Simple

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.309, Library of America

• What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Effort, Bird, Cost

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.163, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

• What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Effort, Receiving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.173, Modern Library

• We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Ideas, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.61, U of Nebraska Press

• The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Men, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.158, Penguin

• I am so much a Unitarian as this: that I believe the human mind can admit but one God, and that every effort to pay religious homage to more than one being goes to take away all right ideas.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Religious, Believe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2905, Delphi Classics

• Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Music, Men, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3208, Delphi Classics

• Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Hands, Effort

• I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Respect, Boredom, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.255, Harvard University Press

• It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Effort, Age

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.193

• All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Writing, Perfect

  Journal, May 1849

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