206 things from this book went into her brain. Here are the first 6.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that all people share one universal mind, so any thinker's insight is open to anyone who reads with attention and reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that the thought always comes before the fact, so what a person later does is first pictured in their own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that every reform was once a private opinion in one person's mind, so today's private ideas can become the solutions of the age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that a sense of the worth of human life lies beneath all education, justice, charity and friendship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged readers to treat their own life as the main text and books as the commentary, reading history actively rather than passively.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged people to sit solidly within themselves and judge the case for themselves, not be bullied into deference by the powers of the day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that each mind must work through a lesson for itself, since a rule handed down unlived gives none of the understanding that comes from doing the work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested understanding any great work by putting yourself in the maker's place and asking what needs and forces could have produced it, until it makes sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said clearer thinking looks past surface differences of colour and size to the underlying causes, which is where real understanding of a problem sits.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that nature casts one thought into many forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral, so the same lesson can appear in very different situations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that beneath endless variety on the surface lies a simple cause, so the many different acts of one person reveal one consistent character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that ordinary people are known by what they do, while a deeply good person moves others simply by who they are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that the whole of chivalry lies in courtesy, since a person of fine manners honours others with more grace than any title could add.
Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that the grand forms of architecture grew out of the plain needs and dwellings of earlier peoples, so humble beginnings often shape what comes later.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that public events are best understood through the people who lived them, and private experiences through the wider patterns they reveal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson contrasted restless curiosity with contented home-keeping, warning that scattering attention over too many things drains the mind, while staying at home risks monotony without fresh input.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that what we see around us corresponds to our own state of mind, and things become intelligible as our thinking grows deeper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed to Xenophon rising in the snow to split wood, and others following, as a plain example of leading by doing the work first.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said we admire the old works not for their age but for their naturalness, made by people who spoke simply before reflection took over.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that a student reads the past through his own experience, so an old truth that echoes something from our youth is easy to recognise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that each reformer repeats the steps of earlier reformers and meets new dangers, and that moral courage is needed to put something better in place of an old superstition.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said great literature is a confession true for one reader and true for all, so a person finds his own story in very old fables.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that people who obey facts literally lose their inner light, while a person who stays true to their better instincts finds the facts falling into place.
Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that Plato said poets often utter great and wise things they do not fully understand, so good work can carry more truth than its maker sees.
In The Bride of Lammermoor and similar tales, Emerson saw faithfulness presented as always beautiful and always open to misfortune in this world, a truth that holds in everyday life too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that a person's power lies in the many links between themselves and other people and the wider world, and that no one can truly live without a world to act upon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that nobody can know in advance what a new experience will unlock in them, and that self-knowledge comes through meeting people and events.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that our actual knowledge is worth less than we think, and it is better to admit what we do not know than to pretend to a certainty we lack.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that genius is trusting your own thought, because what is true in your private heart is often what many people feel too, and we should not drop it just because it is ours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that envy comes from ignorance and copying others drains your own power, so each person must work the ground they have been given and discover what they alone can do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged people to trust themselves and accept the place their own time has given them, acting as guides and benefactors rather than hiding in a protected corner.
Ralph Waldo Emerson warned that the pressure to conform works against the independent self, because society loves names and customs more than the realities behind them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that the integrity of your own mind is the one thing finally sacred, and that goodness has to be tested rather than accepted just because it carries a respected name.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said a person of real strength keeps their independence in a crowd, and does what is right by their own judgement rather than by what others think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that doing your own work reinforces you, while keeping up customs that have gone dead scatters your force and blurs the character others can see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said the displeasure of others is usually shallow and shifts like the wind, so a firm person who knows their own mind can treat it as a small thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson called a foolish consistency the bugbear of small minds, and said a great mind may change its view as it learns, even if that contradicts what it said before.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said a true character reads the same whichever way you look at it, and that it shows itself in every moment, not just in the actions we consciously perform.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that the force of character builds up from all the honest days before it, so acting rightly today rests on what you have already done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one person, and that a true person works as a cause, a country and an age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged people to know their own worth, and said we are often like a drunk who wakes up to find himself a true prince, forgetting our real standing until we pay attention.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said the stake in a private act done today is as great as the famous public deeds of kings, so the choices of ordinary people matter just as much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that people fret over the past or stretch toward the future and miss the present, while a rose simply is what it is in every moment, and so should we be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that if we live truthfully we will see truly, and that repeating the borrowed phrases of others is less useful than trusting our own fresh perception.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that power lies in the moment of change and movement toward an aim, not in having lived or resting on what was done, so a person is always becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson saw self-reliance throughout nature: anything that lasts must be able to help itself, as a bent tree recovers from a strong wind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson advised that independence means not being pulled into every demand on your time, since others can only annoy us through our own weak curiosity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said we should not sell our liberty and power to protect other people's feelings, and that living honestly, even at some cost, serves everyone in the end.
Ralph Waldo Emerson described people who were afraid of truth, fortune, death and each other as parlour soldiers, who shun the rugged battle where real strength is built.
Ralph Waldo Emerson admired people who try many things and live in the present rather than postponing life until a perfect career appears, since they have a hundred chances instead of one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said discontent is a lack of self-reliance, and that when we cannot help someone who is suffering, the best thing is to attend to our own work, where the harm begins to be repaired.
Ralph Waldo Emerson warned that followers can mistake a teacher's system for the truth itself, and that a good teacher's gift is to help the student think for themselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said travel cannot cure a restless heart, because the same unsettled self comes along, so a wise person does the work where they stand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged people to design and make things from their own climate, soil, needs and circumstances, rather than copying models from far away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson insisted that each person should insist on themselves and never imitate, because a gift that is your own can be drawn on fully, while a borrowed talent is only half possessed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that new tools and conveniences can weaken the very skills they replace, so that a person may gain gadgets and lose the ability to know the hour by the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held that new machinery and inventions are only the costume of an age and do not make people greater, and that the great ideas return to essential human qualities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson likened society to a wave: its form moves onward while the people who make it up keep changing, so its unity is only on the surface.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that measuring people by what they own rather than by what they are shows a lack of self-reliance, and that a cultivated person grows ashamed of accidental wealth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged people to stop gambling on fortune and instead work and act, since steady effort brings a freedom from chance, while good luck alone brings no lasting peace.
