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A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.

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
Known
Discover
Men
Gains
Life
Skills
Trade
Intellectual
Largely
Taste
Celebrity
Existence
Skill
Politics
Esteem

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
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There are days when the great are near us, when there is no frown on their brow, no condescension even when they take us by the hand, and we share their thought.
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No institution will be better than the institutor.
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It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
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Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
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The history of reform is always identical it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.
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Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and concealments and partisanship never hurt by the treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul.
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Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.
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The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.
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It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
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The student is to read history actively and not passively to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.
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Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.
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The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
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The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached.
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We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.
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Every stoic was a stoic but in Christendom where is the Christian?
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A philosopher must be more than a philosopher.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?
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There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
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We must be our own before we can be another's.
Ralph Waldo Emerson