We are faced with many challenges, tasks, jobs and duties in our lives. We tend to repeat the same motion of events every day. We get into a slump of get up, go to work, go to bed and then repeat. Each day just feels like another same day. This just getting by, is it really living? Ralph Waldo Emerson calls it just existing. I recently learned about his perspectives on life in one of my college literature classes and it has surely impacted my life. Emerson poses the question do we just want to exist or live? Of course everyone wants to live, but how do we not get so caught up in life that we forget to find substance and significance to it? Well, Emerson offers us so many quotes and sayings on how to live and not just exist. Here are several quotes about living and letting go by the one and only Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you."

"For every minute, you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."

"Nobody can bring you peace but yourself."

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

"Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood."

"We become what we think about all day long."

"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."

"For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else."

"Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm."