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A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

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
Longer
Gently
Shall
Immortal
Dream
Ruins
Men
Innocence
Life
Awake
Innocent
Pass
Dreams

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.
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Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.
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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
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There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.
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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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There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.
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The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
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Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man's habitual preference of the general good to his own but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration.
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Humility is the secret of the wise.
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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.
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We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
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Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
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The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow ever the grass grows.
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Invention breeds invention.
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Revolutions go not backward.
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[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.
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Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong
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A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.
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The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
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Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
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