Ralph Waldo Emerson Courage Quotations

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.

The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.

Courage is temperamental, scientific, ideal.

Courage of the soldier awakes the courage of woman.

Men are so charmed with valor that they have pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, eagles and dragons, from the animals contemporary with us in the geologic formations.

There is a persuasion in the soul of man that he is here for cause, that he was put down in this place by the Creator to do the work for which he inspires him, that thus he is an overmatch for all antagonists that could combine against him.

Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?

It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

Whatever you do, you need courage.