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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Littles
Philosophers
Nonconformity
Little
Philosopher
Adored
Mind
Foolish
Inconsistency
Silly
Statesmen
Minds
Foolishness
Divine
Misunderstood
Science
Consistency
Hobgoblin
Political
Reliance
Divines

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So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
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Our best thoughts come from others.
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Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language - not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.
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Pictures must not be too picturesque.
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We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.
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In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.
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Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.
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An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.
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What you persist in doing gets easier. The task hasn't changed, but your ability to do it has increased.
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Life is too short to waste.
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If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as spiritual life, God, soul, cross, etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.
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What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.
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The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
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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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Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought for causes which are unpenetrated.
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He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.
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Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
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Teach the children! It is painting in fresco.
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Women have a less accurate measure of time than men there is a clock in Adam, none in Eve.
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Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning.
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