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Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

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
Fit
Would
Higher
Question
Future
Soul
Duration
Come
Deserving
Must
Immortality
Great

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are thevictims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In Nature, all is useful, all is beautiful
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago, but it is put to better use.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Best masters for the young writer and speaker are the fault- finding brothers and sisters at home who will not spare him, but willpick and cavil, and tell the odious truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is a search after power and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,-there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,-that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The best of life is conversation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The power of a man increases steadily by continuing in one direction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
Ralph Waldo Emerson