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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
Men
Converting
Monkeys
Institution
Slavery
Slave
Institutions

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Society cannot do without cultivated men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become imperative.
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To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
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The boxer's ring is the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been developed.
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The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.
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A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.
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And, in fine, the ancient precept, Know thyself, and the modern precept, Study nature, become at last one maxim.
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There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.
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Art is the need to create but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.
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Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers.
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Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast the first a handful.
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Accept your genius and say what you think.
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The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
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The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go.
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The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.
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To live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
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More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.
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Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
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Art is a jealous mistress and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
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If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.
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The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.
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