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Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Nature (1836)
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It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth: they had as lief hear that their friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can never do anything for humanity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says "Do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The solid, solid universe
Is pervious to Love;
With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.
His blinding light
He flingeth white
On God's and Satan's brood,
And reconciles
By mystic wiles
The evil and the good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We say love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes. Blind - yes, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love for finding what he seeks, and only that.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creepinto a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is a property in the horizon which no man has, but he whose eyes can integrate all the parts,--that is, the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Quote of the day
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creative Commons
Born:
May 25, 1803
Died:
April 27, 1882
(aged 78)
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