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Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

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
Achieve
Working
Inspirational
Another
Certain
Unawares
Men
Aim
Achievement
Greatness

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step downward, is a step upward. The man who renounceshimself, comes to himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author and my business with him is to find my own, though itwere only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use.
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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Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We come to our own and would make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We can never part with it the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Books are for nothing but to inspire
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Great men are sincere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Invention breeds invention.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Sun is the sole inconsumable fireAnd God is the sole inexhaustible Giver.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson