Here are a dozen quotes from perhaps our greatest, modern-day genius.

• Imagination is more important than knowledge; for knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
• The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.
• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
• The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
• Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
• Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
• If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

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Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.

It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Never, never, never give up.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.

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Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has formed the core notions of many of our great intellects from the 1800’s. He influenced his American contemporaries, such as Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and William James, as well as notable thinkers the stature of Friedrich Nietzsche, and more recently Harold Bloom and Barack Obama. Once asked to sum up his work, Emerson said his central thought was “the infinitude of the private man.”

Here are more of the BGJ’s 100 favourite Emerson quotes (tomorrow our top-ten RWE):

• Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
• Character is that which can do without success.
• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
• Self-trust is the first secret of success.
• The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
• For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
• Shallow men believe in luck, wise and strong men in cause and effect.
• Skill to do comes of doing.
• No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
• He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that.
• A day is a miniature eternity.
• Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
• The only gift is a portion of thyself.
• The only way to have a friend is to be one.
• A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

One side note: When Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau, he asked Thoreau, “Do you keep a journal?” The question went on to have a lifelong inspiration for Thoreau – and today we have the benefit of reading Thoreau’s intimate evolution of personal feelings and thought. Emerson kept a journal throughout his life and his works are contained in 16 large volumes. Today’s scholars consider the journal to be Emerson’s key literary work.

Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Through this week By George Journal is posting one hundred of our favourite quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson – a deep, provocative 19th century author and, we believe, one of the most remarkable of thinkers of our modern age. Here are the next 25 RWE-gems to reflect upon:

•  The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
• The first wealth is health.
• A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
• Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
• The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.
• Sanity is very rare; every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness.
• There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who want something more; that of the sick, who want something different; and that of the traveler, who says, “Anywhere but here.”
• 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.
• When there is no vision, people perish.
• Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
• Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
• Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not.
• The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
• Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.
• Every man is a borrower and a mimic; life is theatrical and literature a quotation.
• We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.
• The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion 20 years later.
• Five great enemies to peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
• As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.
• No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
• A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
• Whatever limits us we call Fate.
• Patience and fortitude conquer all things.
• All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, poet and lecturer. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a founding father of the Transcendentalist movement (expressed first in his 1836 essay Nature). Emerson authored dozens of published essays and conducted more than 1,500 public lectures across the U.S. through the mid-1800s.  He wrote on the core ideas of individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding natural world.

Here are 25 more bons mots of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• Make yourself necessary to somebody.
• With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
• This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
• The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
• Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.
• The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
• To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
• Difficulties exist to be surmounted.
• Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you.
• The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.
• The only reward of virtue is virtue.
• Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
• The world belongs to the energetic.
• Glittering generalities! They are blazing ubiquities.
• Hitch your wagon to a star.
• Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.
• Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.
• We are always getting ready to live, but never living.
• Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
• A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
• The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
• Give all to love; obey thy heart.
• All mankind love a lover.
• All men are poets at heart.
• Vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action.

Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

This week the By George Journal salutes Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who is argumentatively the greatest, modern day thinker and wordsmith of our ages. Each morning, we will bring readers remarkable quotes from this remarkable man – leading to Friday’s list of our “Top-Ten RWE Insights.”

BGJ has chosen a hundred of our favourite gems. Today, here  are 25 of our top-100 Emerson quotes.

• We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly in to the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
• Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
• The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
• We acquire the strength we have overcome.
• Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires … courage.
• There are some men above grief and some men below it.
• God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both.
• When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits; on his manhood; he has gained the facts; learned his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.
• Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
• Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.
• People only see what they are prepared to see.
• The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
• What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
• Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
• A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
• Sorrow makes us all children again.
• Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
• For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
• We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?
• We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.
• Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
• Pictures must not be too picturesque.
• The surest poison is time.
• It is doubtless a vice to turn one’s eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.

Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

A few of our favourite bons mots at By George….

• Strive for excellence, not perfection. – Jackson Brown Jr.
• We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility. – Albert Einstein
• Live this day as if it were your last. The past is gone. The future is not guaranteed. – Dr. Wayne Dyer
• It your attitude, not your aptitude, that will determine your altitude. – Zig Ziglar
• People may not remember what you did, nor will they remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. – Unknown
• You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. – Audrey Hepburn
• Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living the other helps you make a life. – Eleanor Roosevelt
• Never mistake motion for action. – Ernest Hemingway
• A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. – Ayn Rand
• The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination. – Tommy Lasorda
• Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. – Maria Robinson
• The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. – Oprah Winfrey
• Tough times never last, but tough people do. – Dr. Robert Schuller
• The only thing you can control is your character. – Dr. Wayne Dyer
• We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill

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These and more inspirational and motivational quotes are tweeted daily on our Twitter feed – join us @ByGeorgeJournal

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Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.