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All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

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
Improves
Improvement
Society
Men
Plume

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
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Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.
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Nature encourages no looseness pardons no errors.
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It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other and having exhausted that cup of enchantment we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again.
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An eminent teacher of girls said, the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to Europe.
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With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wise men are not wise at all times.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Gods we worship write their names on our faces be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our thinking is a pious reception.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The unbelief of the age is attested by the loud condemnation of trifles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your walk.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wouldst thou shut up the avenues of ill, Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson