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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
Must
Writing
Behinds
Make
Behind
Men
Writer
Talent
Alone
Cannot
Book

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We animate what we can see, and we see only what we animate.
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I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.
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I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
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Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.
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Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth.
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Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.
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Why has my motley diary no jokes? Because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone.
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Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.
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Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
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Cultivate an attitude of gratitude, of giving and forgiving. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
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In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
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Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.
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There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.
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A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.
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When there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise,--so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.
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We live ruins amid ruins.
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So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
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There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries.
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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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The household is a school of power. There, within the door, learn the tragi-comedy of human life.
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