Quote

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.

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
Broken
Beware
Risk
Loose
Cities
Lets
Science
Thinker
Ends
Planet
Great
Planets
Things
City
Men
Safe
Conflagration

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
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He is great who confers the most benefits.
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But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.
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Most people, who have quit smoking, have had at least one unsuccessful try in the past. It is not important how many times you try to quit. The only important thing is, that eventually you stay quit
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Astrology is astronomy brought down to Earth and applied toward the affairs of men.
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The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist.
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Great men exist that there might be greater men.
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I fear the popular notion of success stands in direct opposition in all points to the real and wholesome success. One adores public opinion, the other, private opinion one, fame, the other, desert one, feats, the other, humility one, lucre, the other, love one, monopoly, and the other, hospitality of mind.
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The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.
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He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
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Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors.
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Every great man is unique.
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A mob is a society obodies, voluntarily bereaving themselves oreason, and traversing its work. The mob is man, voluntarily descending to the nature othe beast. Its fit hour oactivity is night its actions are insane, like its whole constitution.
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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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The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
Ralph Waldo Emerson