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Power is the first good.

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
Power
Firsts
First
Good

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Talent may frolic and juggle genius realizes and adds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Astrology is astronomy brought down to Earth and applied toward the affairs of men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We love force and we care very little how it is exhibited.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education oftenlabors to silence and obstruct.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals - The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something ... he learns his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit has got moderation and real skill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature encourages no looseness pardons no errors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We must be our own before we can be another's.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson