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In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.
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
Dear
Paper
Enchanter
Reading
Imprisoned
Friends
Literacy
Many
Surrounded
Hundreds
Boxes
Library
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Teach the children! It is painting in fresco.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are thevictims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beware of jokes from which we go away hollow and ashamed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power and speed be hands and feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think no virtue goes with size.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times.
Ralph Waldo Emerson