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Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.

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
Past
Corrupts
Snakes
Turns
Whatever
History

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He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser.
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A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step downward, is a step upward. The man who renounceshimself, comes to himself.
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The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.
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Some will always be above others.
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A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.
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We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
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Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
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Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.
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What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.
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Revolutions go not backward.
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Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
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Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good.
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The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.
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Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.
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Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyph to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.
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I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.
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Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.
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Pines a thousand years old. Every year they must go farther for them: they recede, like beavers and Indians, before the white man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Far or forgot to me is near Shadow and sunlight are the same The vanished gods to me appear And one to me are shame and fame.They reckon ill who leave me out When me they fly, I am the wings I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
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