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Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

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
Wonder
Secret
Whereto
Music
Startles
Whispers
Whence
Secrets
Actual
Takes

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The lover of letters loves power too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye it transcends speech it is the bodily symbol of identity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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People are timid and apologetic they are no longer upright they dare not say I think, I am, but quote some saint or sage. They are ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones they are for what they are they exist with God to-day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson