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All the devils respect virtue.

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
Devils
Devil
Respect
Virtue

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Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
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All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
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The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.
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Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, aman of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.
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Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show.
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Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is thenatural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.
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The soul refuses limits and always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You can take better care of your secret than another can.
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Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
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An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.
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Society is the stage on which manners are shown novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.
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Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says Do not flatter your benefactors, but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson