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Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

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
Slave
Institutions
Men
Converting
Monkeys
Institution
Slavery

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The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.
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I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.
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The shows of the day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, andthe like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality.
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The soul is the perceiver and the revealer of truth.
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Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
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I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
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Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.
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It is time to be old To take in sail.
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I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.
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It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
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Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.
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Excite the soul, and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear the world itself loses its solidity, nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.
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Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.
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The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The picture waits for my verdict it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What we seek we shall find what we flee from flees from us.
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I can believe a miracle because I can raise my own arm. I can believe a miracle because I can remember. I can believe it because I can speak and be understood by you.
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Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at right time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
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Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows.
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