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The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.

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
Public
Securing
State
Civility
Action
Directed
States
Proof
Whole
Number
Good
Highest
Numbers
Greatest

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The world is his who can see through its pretension.
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When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief.
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The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.
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Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.
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Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
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The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
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The world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh.
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What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
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The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.
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The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.
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If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.
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I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.
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A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude.
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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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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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