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

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.
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The pest of society is egotists.
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A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
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To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.
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My good hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I have less lust to bite my enemies. In the smoothing the rough hillocks, I smooth my temper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
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Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself.
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If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
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The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For flowers that bloom about our feet For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet For song of bird, and hum of bee For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
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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
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The soul is the perceiver and the revealer of truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town whichwas appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars merchants have let them give them. Farmers will give corn poets will sing women will sew laborers will lend a hand the children will bring flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson