Quote

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

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
Genius
Amount
Hours
Retrospect
Persons
Confined
Person
Productivity
Much
Routine
Time
Preparation
Spent

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A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us.
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No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
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Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and concealments and partisanship never hurt by the treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul.
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Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.
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A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.
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The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.
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Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.
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[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.
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The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
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Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
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The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
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Man is a piece of the universe made alive
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There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.
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Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle everything else is an intrigue.
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An actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel.
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Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy.
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Life is in short cycles or periods we are quickly tired, but we have rapid rallies. A man is spent by his work, starved, prostrate he will not lift his hand to save his life he can never think more. He sinks into deep sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with hope, courage, fertile in resources, and keen for daring adventure.
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An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
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How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.
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Music is the poor man's Parnassus.
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