Quote

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

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
Art
Live
Every
Men
Practising
Competitors
Conversation
Mankind

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye it transcends speech it is the bodily symbol of identity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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On bravely through the sunshine and the showers! Time hath his work to do, and we have ours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beauty through my senses stole I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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By virtue of the Deity thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations.
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of beat.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To educate the wise man, the State exists and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You can take better care of your secret than another can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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War, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead of their bowels.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson