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Man is physical as well as metaphysical, a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

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
Physical
Shreds
Mankind
Misfits
Start
Patches
Wells
Borrowed
Well
Metaphysical
Thing
Ancestors
Good
Ancestor
Unequally
Men
Humankind
Misfit

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.
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The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
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A beautiful woman is a practical poet.
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We learn that God IS that he is in me and that all things are shadows of him.
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Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
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We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
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I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, Are you victimizable?
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I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
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Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.
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Sometimes we receive the power to say yes to life. Then peace enters us and makes us whole.
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A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for 10 minutes longer.
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The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.
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What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
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By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.
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Thought makes everything fit for use.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
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Character is always known. Thefts never enrich alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls.
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Books are the best of things if well used if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
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Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.
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