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The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

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
Foolishness
Excess
Fool
Wise
Wisdom
Made

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The Same, the Same: friend and foe are of one stuff the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of form are unimportant.
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'Well,' said Red Jacket [to someone complaining that he had not enough time], 'I suppose you have all there is.'
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How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself when he loses himself in the crowd when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.
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He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness.
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The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.
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The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in... the part he plays.
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The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.
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One can never truly savor success until first tasting adversity.
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The river knows the way to the sea: Without a pilot it runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity.
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There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.
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Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
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Life is a boundless privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have no guess what good company you shall find there.
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As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.
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The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.
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A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.
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I like man, but not men.
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Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.
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Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.
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Marriage (in what is called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object.
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I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction.
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