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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
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
Luxury
Dinner
Conservative
Least
Politics
Luxurious
Men
Vigorous
Conservatism
Conservatives
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the irregular hours or irregular diet that makes the romantic life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thought makes everything fit for use.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All history is biography.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Doing well is a result of doing good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says Do not flatter your benefactors, but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear and you shall never find that perception again never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
Ralph Waldo Emerson