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

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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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Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The populace drags down the gods to their own level.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature is a frugal mother, and never gives without measure. When she has work to do, she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.
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Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.
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As we are, so we do and as we do, so is it done to us we are the builders of our fortunes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature is saturated with Deity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Commerce is of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All mankind love a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Be an opener of doors
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All the world loves a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson