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The powers of the Soul are commensurate with its needs.

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
Commensurate
Powers
Soul
Needs

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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'Well,' said Red Jacket [to someone complaining that he had not enough time], 'I suppose you have all there is.'
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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And, in fine, the ancient precept, Know thyself, and the modern precept, Study nature, become at last one maxim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also as the green grass.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of education, the viceof religion, is one with that of the private life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson