Quote

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

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
Feels
Grateful
Different
Worse
Mind
Minds
Relieved
Something
Hell
Depending
World
Heaven
Disappointed
Whether
Compare
Better
Bitter
Feel
Gratitude

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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.
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Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
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Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.
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Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.
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But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.
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Flowers are the earth laughing.
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The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.
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The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.
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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
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Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.
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Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's revenge for this humanity.What manner of man does science make? The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as my professor is.
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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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That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.
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If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
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But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.
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A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment and even obstacles and opposition will but make us like the fabled specter-ships, which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
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The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.
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Love is like a hunter, who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness. Love is strongest in pursuit friendship in possession.
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To believe in luck ... is skepticism.
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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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