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Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.

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
Fossil
Fossils
Plant
Government

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Health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend.
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The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
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Science, Nature,-O, I've yearned to open some page.
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Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.
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Every day, a little sadder, a little madder. Will someone get me a ladder?
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Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.
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Every reform was once a private opinion.
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Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual
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If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.
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Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.
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Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
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Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
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We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.
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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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I will no longer confer, differ, refer, defer, prefer, or suffer. I renounce the whole tribe of fero. I embrace absolute life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is his who can see through its pretension.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The intellect,-that is miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
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