Quote

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

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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
Sense
Forced
Felt
Stranger
Else
Conviction
Another
Shame
Thought
Tomorrow
Take
Shall
Masterly
Good
Opinion
Latent
Time
Speak
Precisely

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.
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The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?
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Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
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We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.
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Literature is eavesdropping.
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Our thinking is a pious reception.
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Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.
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What you persist in doing gets easier. The task hasn't changed, but your ability to do it has increased.
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Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
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Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.
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[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.
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Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore.
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Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning.
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There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.
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...man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the center of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man.
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I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
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It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.
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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.
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A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.
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We ascribe beauty to that which is simple which has no superfluous parts which exactly answers its end which stands related to all things which is the mean of many extremes.
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