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Every reform was once a private opinion.

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
Catchy
Reform
Private
Opinion
Every

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All life is an experiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I like man, but not men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Knowledge is the antidote to fear,- Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My good hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I have less lust to bite my enemies. In the smoothing the rough hillocks, I smooth my temper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.
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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You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.
Ralph Waldo Emerson