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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
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Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
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More quotes by 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
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the night is darkest, the stars come out.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less I have more clothes, but am nit so warm more armor, but less courage more books, but less wit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No nation has produced anything like his equal. There is no quality in the human mind, there is no class of topics, there is no region of thought, in which he has not soared or descended, and none in which he has not said the commanding word.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am become a transparent eyeball.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
