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Books are the best of things, well used abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

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
Well
Inspire
Nothing
Among
Things
Worst
Books
Used
Best
Wells
Book
Abused

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Don't set out to teach theism from your natural history... You spoil both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.
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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The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful therefore to make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be submitted to the universal mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Your work should be in praise of what you love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The kitchen clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we do by the Linnæan classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best-settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, with hope & love, & go as brave as the zodiack. In age we put out another sort of perspiration gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and avarice.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The secret of success in education is respecting the students.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine,--and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he ispraised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.
Ralph Waldo Emerson