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Why has my motley diary no jokes? Because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone.

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
Alone
Soliloquy
Every
Motley
Men
Diary
Diaries
Journal
Grave
Graves
Jokes

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is as lazy as he dares to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A little praise goes a great ways.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,-must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of education, the viceof religion, is one with that of the private life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye it transcends speech it is the bodily symbol of identity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson