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

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People are very inclined to set moral standards for others.
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Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
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Work and thou canst escape the reward whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.
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There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
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A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will.
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I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
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If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
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Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit.
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The way to learn German, is, to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart.
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The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith
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Meek young men grow up in libraries.
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We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man.
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Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.
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Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
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A man in debt is so far a slave.
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Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver.
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The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
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I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine.
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I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look,begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary!
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I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, Are you victimizable?
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