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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
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Well
Environment
Volunteer
Make
Differences
Honorable
Love
Purpose
Compassionate
Life
Happy
Useful
History
Lived
Inspirational
Compassion
Helping
Honor
Wells
Difference

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The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.
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One must be an inventor to read well.
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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.
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Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.
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The first lesson of history is that evil is good.
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A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.
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There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth it is the beginning of wisdom.
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A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.
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If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.
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The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.
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Style is only the frame to hold your thoughts. It is like the sash of a window if heavy, it will obscure the light.
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As we are, so we do and as we do, so is it done to us we are the builders of our fortunes.
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Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.
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The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down aspires and not despairs.
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The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.
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The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
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A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation.
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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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If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.
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I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence andgood will at the heart of all things, and even higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?
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