Quote

Thefts never enrich alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie-for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance-will instantly vitiate the effect.

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
Speak
Honesty
Instantly
Thefts
Make
Effect
Walls
Admixture
Good
Stones
Stone
Impoverish
Never
Effects
Vanity
Taint
Wall
Attempt
Alms
Example
Impression
Favorable
Least
Appearance
Enrich
Lying
Murder
Theft

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The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
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For he that feeds men serveth few He serves all who dares be true.
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We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
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I pay the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys that educate my son.
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It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.
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A man becomes what he thinks about most of the time
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Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.
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Calmness is always godlike.
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A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.
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Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of beat.
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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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Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.
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Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
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Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.
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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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The highest end of government is the culture of men.
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Men are better than this theology.
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Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.
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All the elements, whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become big masters.
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Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.
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