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We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
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
Choosing
Elected
Friendship
Talk
Friends
Self
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life has a way of demanding that you live it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poets should be law-givers that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars merchants have let them give them. Farmers will give corn poets will sing women will sew laborers will lend a hand the children will bring flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. The mind does not create what it perceives, anymore than the eye creates the rose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant is the lord that shall be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rude poets of the tavern hearth, squandering your unquoted mirth, which keeps the ground, and never soars, while jake retorts, and reuben roars tough and screaming, as birch-bark, goes like bullet to its mark while the solid curse and jeer never balk the waiting ear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
