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We must be our own before we can be another's.

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
Another
Must
Healing
Oneself
Friendship
Friends

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If the East loves infinity, the West delights in boundaries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do not to work, but to be worked upon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I suppose you could never explain to the most ingenous molusk that such a creature as a whale existed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The order of things consents to virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our life seems not present, so much as prospective not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- flowingvigor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
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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Solitary converse with nature for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, and October woods!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is one mind common to all individual men
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.
Ralph Waldo Emerson