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The ancestor of every action is a thought.

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
Every
Ancestor
Management
Learning
Acting
Knowledge
Action
Thought

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of histuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop- windows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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An empire is an immense egotism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Knowledge is the antidote to fear
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem the shepherd, his lamb the farmer, corn the miner, a stone the painter, his picture the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdom which cannot help itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I will not hide my tastes or aversions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions I will seek my own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac a talent for debate, disputant skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson