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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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There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.
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The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
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I am Defeated all the time, yet to Victory I am born.
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The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.
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Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.
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I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.
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When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.
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Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
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I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
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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Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?
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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.
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I DO not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me.
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Ethics and religion differ herein that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God Ethics does not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Words are alive. Cut them and they bleed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.
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It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist
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If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.
Ralph Waldo Emerson