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The finest poetry was first experience.

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
Finest
Poetry
Experience
Firsts
First

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false,--this is the mark and character of intelligence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Where the banana grows man is sensual and cruel.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Plant your DREAMS and miracles will grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We come to our own and would make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We can never part with it the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Everything in our world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All great men come out of the middle classes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Get Health. No labor, effort nor exercise that can gain it must be grudged.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.
Ralph Waldo Emerson