Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.
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All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
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I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.
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Self-trust is the first secret of success.
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Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
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Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home: Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
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There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, - now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.
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The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
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Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
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I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
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In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.
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In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?
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The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
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A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays.
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Almost all people descend to meet.
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There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.
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The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.
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Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.
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Nothing can be preserved that is not good.
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And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, 'All these will I relinquish if you will show me the fountain of the Nile.'
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Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the muse; Nothing refuse.
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To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!
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I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.
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The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.