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Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.

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
Art
Lessons
Whole
Works
Humored
Great
Expression
Affecting
Good
Side
Abide
Sides
Spontaneous
Teach
Voices
Whether
Lesson
Voice
Cry

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Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.
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We walk alone in the world.
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Life loiters at the book's first page,-- Ah! could we turn the leaf.
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To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
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Of Nature itself upon the soul the sunrise, the haze of autumn, the winter starlight seem interlocutors the prevailing sense is that of an exposition in poetry a high discourse, the voice of the speaker seems to breathe as much from the landscape as from his own breast it is Nature communing with the seer.
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Intellect is a fire rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.
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The surest poison is time.
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A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
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Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.
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Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
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It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifferenceto death.
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Genius is saying what is in your heart, because it's in everyone's heart.
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The goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in nature which it subservessuch as we see in the sexual attraction.
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I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.
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The world exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty.
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Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
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We say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors.
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Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
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Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
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The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all material. He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power.
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