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Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

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
Wisdom
Consistency
Pythagoras
Understanding
Reliance
Copernicus
Jesus
Luther
Galileo
Spirit
Flesh
Transcendentalism
Ever
Greatness
Inconsistency
Great
Took
Socrates
Every
Pure
Newton
Life
Wise
Misunderstood

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man is a god in ruins.
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I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.
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I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.
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Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore.
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Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
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The Soul rules over matter. Matter may pass away like a mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of God, as a mistis absorbed into the heat of the Sun--but the soul is the kingdom of God, the abode of love, of truth, of virtue.
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All that can be done for you is nothing to what you can do for yourself.
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Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.
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I covet truth beauty is unripe childhood's cheat I leave it behind with the games of youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.
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The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.
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I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-borne treasures home.
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A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality.
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Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
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The State is our neighbors our neighbors are the State.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
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By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.
Ralph Waldo Emerson