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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.
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
Rights
Dies
Beneficent
Firsts
Inch
First
Inches
Territory
Rational
Sea
Sun
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
That you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous You must have also the untaught strain That sheds beauty on the rose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As long as any man exists, there is some need of him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cardinal virtue of a teacher [is] to protect the pupil from his own influence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The people are to be taken in very small doses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live in the sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conformity is the ape of harmony.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A human being should beware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you persist in doing gets easier. The task hasn't changed, but your ability to do it has increased.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
