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The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
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
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Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
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More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As soon as a child has left the room his strewn toys become affecting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is a frugal mother, and never gives without measure. When she has work to do, she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. It is so well, that it is sure that it will be well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where there is no vision a people perish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People wish to be settled only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
By virtue of the Deity thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to go to church no more.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all kinds,--epic, tragedy, lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve them they will never forget it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
