Quote

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.

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
Challenges
Moan
Cynic
Incessant
Propositions
Cynicism
Preacher
Disconsolate
Challenge
Bewail
Negative
Omit

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Everything in our world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe.
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Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.
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Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.
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No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
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The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
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To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.
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[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.
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Good nature is stronger than tomahawks.
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God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
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Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
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Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
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Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, so hot? my little Sir.
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A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him a defect pays him revenues on the other side.
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The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.
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There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.
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To eat bread is one thing to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another.
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Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.
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As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.
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The student is to read history actively and not passively to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.
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