Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.
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Every burned book enlightens the world.
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Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
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Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
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Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.
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In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.
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Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
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Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
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None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.
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But these young scholars who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.
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Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
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So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.
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The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
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The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
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To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
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Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.
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They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
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Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
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You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
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God will not have his work made manifest by cowards
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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.
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Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.
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Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
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Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.