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Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

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
Future
Live
Must
Always
Time
Selfishness
Appear
Selfish
Present

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For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
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We know that madness belongs to love,--what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven.
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There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty.
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As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.
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Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.
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It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men in their religion in their education in their pursuits their modes of living their association in their property in their speculative views.
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Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.
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There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
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In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
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It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.
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A man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him.
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The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.
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Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.
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I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence andgood will at the heart of all things, and even higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?
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A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.
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The Oversoul is before Time, and Time, Father of all else, is one of his children.
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Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.
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Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.
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