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The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

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
True
Crops
Character
Test
Country
Ethics
Kind
Tests
Men
Size
Civilization
Cities
Turns
Census

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Society does not love its unmaskers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Books are the best of things if well used if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
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Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one Nothing is fair or good alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The value of a dollar is to buy just things a dollar goes on increasing in value with all the genius and all the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university is worth more than a dollar in a jail in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding community than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic are in constant play.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The gates of thought, - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
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To be great, you must be misunderstood
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There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept or if you have slept or if you have head ache or sciatica or leprosy or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace and not pollute the morning.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man's actions are the picture book of his creeds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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One thing is forever good That one thing is Success.
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 begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for thesalvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.
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But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When a man becomes cultivated, he develops a new respect for who he is. This causes him to be ashamed of his past identification of himself and others according to things, i.e. property.
Ralph Waldo Emerson