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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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No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at right time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Obedience alone gives the right to command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When it comes to divide an estate, the politest men quarrel.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is sublime to think and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus and thus, I know it was right.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson