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

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life has a way of demanding that you live it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are a transfusion takes place he is you, and you are he then is a teaching and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever lose the benefit.
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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But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Love is like wildflowers It's often found in the most unlikely places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson