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The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

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
Else
Inventor
Another
Doom
Music
Mediocrity
Come
Hopeless
Something
Charm
Men
Short
Beauty
Dooms
Natural
Imitator

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Nothing is quite beautiful alone nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.
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Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.
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That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
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Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Teaching barren moors to smile, Painting pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
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It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
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Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it
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It is the eye which makes the horizon.
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Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
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Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.
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Our prayers are prophets.
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O friend, never strike sail to a fear!
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I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.
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All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
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Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
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A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man on trial. The man of principle is known as such, and even in the fury of faction is respected.
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Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding
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The secret of success in education is respecting the students.
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Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
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Obedience alone gives the right to command.
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