Quote

If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

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
People
Inspirational
Serve
True
Fit
Back
Hero
Decorous
Find
Brother
Congratulate
Take
Broken
Commend
Done
Strange
Monotony
Something
Age
Extravagant
Would
Words
Prudent

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.
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I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat I will not love you.
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Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
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Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.
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We might as easily reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.
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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.
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Every sweet has its sour every evil its good.
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The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
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The ocean is a large drop a drop is a small ocean.
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The intellectual man requires a fine bait the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.
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Every day, a little sadder, a little madder. Will someone get me a ladder?
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Popularity is for dolls.
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If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?
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We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
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Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
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A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.
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Be brave enough to do the loving thing.
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There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.
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The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson