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

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
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I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.
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If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
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No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.
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Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.
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It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
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As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
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How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
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The hero is he who is immovably centered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge as the chemicalenergy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum.
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The best nations are those most widely related and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer ofnations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When it is dark enough, men see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.
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The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere only the low habits need palaces and banquets.
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Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson