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Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
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
Better
Nettle
Nettles
Echo
Echoes
Friendship
Friend
Side
Sides
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The end of being is to know and if you say, the end of knowledge is action,-why, yes, but the end of that action again, is knowledge.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low for we musthave a society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let there be worse cotton and better men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything in our world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved time, which keeps her from him, is his chest the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The laws of light and of heat translate each other-so do the laws of sound and colour and so galvanism, electricity and magnetism are varied forms of this selfsame energy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration they have a light, and know not whence it comes, and call it their own their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
