Quote

Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

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
Seems
Sleep
Profit
Profoundest
Book
Books
Ears
Sleeps
Heart
Passion
Meant
Passages
Every
Reading
Mines
Sensibility
Mind
History
Mine
Finds
Good
Makes
Reader
Hidden
Else
Equal
Discovered
Thought
Seem
According
Confidences

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.
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The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.
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It is not an arbitrary decree of God, but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day.
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Everything has its price - and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained... it is impossible to get anything without this price.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.
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Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.
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No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
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All public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized.
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A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us
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Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.
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All are needed by each one Nothing is fair or good alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, so hot? my little Sir.
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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.
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By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.
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[W]e pity our fathers for dying before steam and galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, photograph and spectrograph arrived, as cheated out of their human estate.
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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
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Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson