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What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
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
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Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
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Intellectual
Equally
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May
Actual
Whole
Solitude
Must
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Arduous
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Meanness
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Concerns
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must but coop up most men and you undo them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream neither is it a disease but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make youself necessary to someone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is saying what is in your heart, because it's in everyone's heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education should be as broad as man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem the shepherd, his lamb the farmer, corn the miner, a stone the painter, his picture the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I like people who like Plato.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
