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A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice 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
Suffice
Instincts
Plain
Intuition
Instinct
Rules
Strong

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.
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The walking of Man is falling forwards.
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The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.
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The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.
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The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
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Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.
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If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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Teach me your mood, O patient stars. Who climb each night, the ancient sky. leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
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All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.
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The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward in talent from without inward.
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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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Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.
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Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A gentleman makes no noise a lady is serene.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I do not wish to please him I wish that he should wish to please me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.
Ralph Waldo Emerson