Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.
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Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
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Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.
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The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
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Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.
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Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
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Every artist was first an amateur.
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Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
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People only see what they are prepared to see.
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We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.
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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
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Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
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The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
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Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.
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Pictures must not be too picturesque.
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All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
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Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
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Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'
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The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
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As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.
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Beauty without expression is boring.
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Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
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The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.
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He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.