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Ralph Waldo Emerson -
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It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Very few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. We still carry sticking to us some remains of the preceding inferior quadruped organization. We call these millions men; but they are not yet men. Half-engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all the music that can be brought to disengage him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail; when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is a capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his charities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is actually weak, and apparently strong. To himself, he seems weak; to others, formidable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has heenterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creative Commons
Born:
May 25, 1803
Died:
April 27, 1882
(aged 78)
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