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The first lesson of history is that evil is good.
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
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Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
First
Good
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Lessons
Evil
History
Firsts
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I quote another man's saying unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A gentleman makes no noise a lady is serene.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The order of things consents to virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
