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All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effiminated by position of nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

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
Nature
Conservative
Like
Blind
Invalids
Parents
Defensive
Personal
Halt
Position
Conservatism
Parent
Conservatives
Politics
Defects
Born
Luxury

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The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.
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My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation.
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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
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Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect.
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
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The highest Beauty should be plain set.
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The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.
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There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.
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I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
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Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.
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Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. ... Society can never prosper, but must always be bankrupt, until every man does that which he was created to do.
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The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite.
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Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.
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We walk alone in the world.
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The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
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Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
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A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
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He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that.
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Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism.
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It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.
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