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Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

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
Live
Life
Wastes
Whilst
Preparing
Waste

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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My doom and my strength is to be solitary.
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Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds.
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The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.
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All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.
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We do not yet trust the unknown power of thoughts.
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Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
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There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.
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Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior.
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There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us in other words, to engage us to obey.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides.
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The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You must let go of a thing for a new one to come to you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What matters most is not what is behind us or before us, but what is within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Power is what they want, not candy-power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A Judge may be a farmer but he is not to geld his own pigs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men - that is genius... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist... What I must do, is all that concerns me not what the people think... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself nothing, but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson