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Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

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
Power
Thing

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A determined man, by his very attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat, and begins to conquer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, All summer in the field, and all winter in the study. And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We take care of our health we lay up money we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Thought is the seed of action but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is the inlet and may become the outlet of all there is in God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The hero is he who is immovably centered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The student is to read history actively and not passively to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson