Quote

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.

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
Onward
Composed
Moves
Wave
Society
Water
Moving
Doe

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Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men.
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The only reward of virtue is virtue.
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The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.
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I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, Are you victimizable?
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Live in the fields, and God will give you lectures on natural philosophy every day.
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Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
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If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.
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Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.
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The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.
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Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.
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a good reader makes a good book
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Whatever limits us we call fate.
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If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as spiritual life, God, soul, cross, etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.
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Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man.
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For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
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That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say even though we may repeat the words ever so often.
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Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.
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One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.
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I covet truth beauty is unripe childhood's cheat I leave it behind with the games of youth.
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My good hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I have less lust to bite my enemies. In the smoothing the rough hillocks, I smooth my temper.
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