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The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.

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
Creativity
Opinion
Undue
Public
Terrors
Creative
Discourage
Living
Discouraging
Fear
Consistency
Two
Reverence
Terror

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Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.
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In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.
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The secret of drunkenness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.
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Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.
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Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.
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And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
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Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.
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Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
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People who know how to act are never preachers.
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The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community
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To educate the wise man, the State exists and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State.
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This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.
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An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.
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O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.
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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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Language is the archives of history.
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The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal.
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Man sheds grief as his skin sheds rain.
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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
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