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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
Men
Cotton
Worse
Peace
Better

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Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?
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Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.
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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
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Convert life into truth.
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But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
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There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.
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There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.
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The picture waits for my verdict it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
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The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.
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The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.
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The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.
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The soul refuses limits and always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism.
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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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The best political economy is the care and culture of men for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.
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We walk alone in the world.
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Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.
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But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
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It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.
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Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.
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