Quote

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.

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
Discovered
Busy
Whether
Indolent
Times
Afterwards
Inspirational
Begun
Thought
Idle
Today
Improvement
Much
Accomplished

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God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
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Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
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Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
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The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.
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The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
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Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
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I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.
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Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning.
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Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
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Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
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Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?
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Wise men are not wise at all times.
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The mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose.
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Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.
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Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less I have more clothes, but am nit so warm more armor, but less courage more books, but less wit.
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We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
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The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health he must be at the top of his condition.
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Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency.
Ralph Waldo Emerson