INTRODUCTION
Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the main figures of the New England Transcendentalism movement. Though he died just 30 miles from where he was born in Massachusetts, his ideas have inspired people all over the world.
Now it’s your turn to be inspired.
Small sentences can contain huge ideas. When people say they love a book with many pages, they often will return to just a very few quotes within that book, carry them, hold them, live by them, and allow those ideas to enlarge, and expand them to make them better. That’s the purpose of this book: to inspire and enlarge you with the most potent, distilled ideas from Emerson’s vast array of writings and speeches.
Some of these ideas are like Eastern koans—little paradoxical sayings that have layers of meanings the more you read them. Others are inspirational, beckoning you to go within and find your answers inside you.
His ideas are universal. Emerson wrote and taught during a different time, with different norms, including his use of the male pronoun to mean all people. We’ve left his writings as he wrote them, but his ideas include all of us, regardless of gender. If you want to dive further into his ideas and life, make sure to go read more books by and about Emerson.
Here’s a suggestion for how to use this book: read the quote for each day, ponder it, ask yourself if you agree with it and how it applies to you and your life. Then go live your truth. Repeat each day. By the end of the year, you will have gone on an inner adventure that will no doubt positively impact your outer life as well.
These ideas have lived a very long time … and now they can be alive in you.
—Joel Fotinos
JANUARY 1
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
JANUARY 2
Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours.
JANUARY 3
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
JANUARY 4
Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
JANUARY 5
Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
JANUARY 6
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
JANUARY 7
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
JANUARY 8
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
JANUARY 9
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.
JANUARY 10
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
JANUARY 11
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.
JANUARY 12
Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.
JANUARY 13
Make the most of yourself for that is all there is of you.
JANUARY 14
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
JANUARY 15
Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance.
JANUARY 16
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
JANUARY 17
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
JANUARY 18
The first wealth is health.
JANUARY 19
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Copyright © 2022 by Joel Fotinos
