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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
Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The democrat is a young conservative the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,--because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If it costs ten years, and ten to recover the general prosperity, the destruction of the South is worth so much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A child convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. The reward for a thing well done, is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We read often with as much talent as we write.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Learn from it... tomorrow is a new day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The universe is the externalization of the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.
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