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Ralph Waldo Emerson -
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A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will ; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institutions. Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of God have, from time to time, walked among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The wings of Time are black and white,
Pied with morning and with night.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should be able to find the time in my face.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The louder he talked of his honesty, the quicker we counted the silverware.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The kitchen clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we do by the Linnæan classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best-settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creative Commons
Born:
May 25, 1803
Died:
April 27, 1882
(aged 78)
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