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Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

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
Memory
Transcendentalism
Poetry
Breathes
Memories
Conservatism
Prayer
Prudence
Makes
Invention
Reform
Breathe
Gratitude
Husbandry

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The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.
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We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.
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Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.
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It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
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Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
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Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.
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Every man is a new method.
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To be great, you must be misunderstood
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Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.
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In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.
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People wish to be settled only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
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We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
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Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle everything else is an intrigue.
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Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.
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Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.
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The need for a rational consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
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The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.
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Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
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