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Let there be worse cotton and better men.

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
Cotton
Worse
Peace
Better
Men

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our thinking is a pious reception.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear and you shall never find that perception again never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Neither is life long enough for friendship. That is a serious and majestic affair.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine,--and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he ispraised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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People only see what they are prepared to see. If you look for what is good and what you can be grateful for you will find it everywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Ability without honor has no value.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation when memory came, it was experience when mind acted, it was knowledge when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson