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Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.

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
Always
Nation
Dramatic
Influence
Witness
Enemy
Bear
Literature
English
Nations
Bears
Two
Poet
Every
Hundred
Sufficiently
Years
Genius
Poets

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The gentleman is a man of truth.
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We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
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To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
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I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the state, the church, yea the friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal beside the sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so much fear, let it be respected.
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Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.
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The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
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The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
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He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.
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The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.
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Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
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The God who made New Hampshire Taunted the lofty land With little men.
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Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing.
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A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.
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Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.
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The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by redemption of the soul.
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Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.
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Religion must always be a crab fruit it cannot be grafted, and keep its wild beauty.
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It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.
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The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.
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Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.
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