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It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist

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
Exist
Late
Made
Helped
Unhappy
Discovery

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. . Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.
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The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs.
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Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.
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Thou art to me a delicious torment.
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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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Life is a series of surprises.
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When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him.
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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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Love not the flower they pluck and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.
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Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.
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Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.
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A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
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What you do thunders above your head so loudly, I cannot hear the words you speak.
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As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought And fanned the dreams it never brought.
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Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Ability without honor has no value.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sea is masculine, the type of active strength. Look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery?
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A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
Ralph Waldo Emerson