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There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

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
Blood
Virtue
Make
Creep
Creeps
Vice
Vices
Capacity

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Adult males are what their moms designed them.
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Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.
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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
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There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do not to work, but to be worked upon.
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Life is a series of surprises.
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What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.
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Henceforth, please God, forever I forego the yolk of men's opinions. I will be light-hearted as a bird and live with God. I find him in the bottom of my heart, and I hear continually his voice therein.
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And in cases where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power of articulation.
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Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.
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Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.
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Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement.
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Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.
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Walking has the best value as gymnastics of the mind.
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Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.
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The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
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The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves the man is lost.
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Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.
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Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
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