Quote

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

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
Represent
Cold
Talent
Business
Doe
Goldsmith
Giving
Lifeless
Something
Shops
Life
Shopping

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We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves.
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Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.
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The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.
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Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.
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We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
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Religion must always be a crab fruit it cannot be grafted, and keep its wild beauty.
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If the East loves infinity, the West delights in boundaries.
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Nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.
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Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.
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I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.
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The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
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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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Every word we speak is million-faced or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. If it were not so we could read no book. Your remark would only fit your case, not mine.
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Delicious is a just and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a feeling.
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The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
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A day is a miniature eternity.
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When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.
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We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.
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In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?
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Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.
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