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A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

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
Stands
God
Greatness
Small
Great
Men

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Thought dissolves the material universe by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A child convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. The reward for a thing well done, is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Thought is the seed of action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I covet truth beauty is unripe childhood's cheat I leave it behind with the games of youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The inmost in due time becomes the outmost.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought for causes which are unpenetrated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as spiritual life, God, soul, cross, etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson