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Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

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
Talent
Alone
Cannot
Book
Must
Writing
Behinds
Make
Behind
Men
Writer

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Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.
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We must be our own before we can be another's.
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Love, and you shall be loved.
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Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing.
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For the world was built in order around the atoms march in tune Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them, and the moon.
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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.
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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.
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The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.
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I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.
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Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?
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It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.
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A weed is a plant we've found no use for yet.
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Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
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All great men come out of the middle classes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.
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Happy is the hearing man unhappy the speaking man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
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A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.
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Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.
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Pictures must not be too picturesque.
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