Quote

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.

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
Make
Sun
Infinite
Eclipses
Air
Elasticity
Moon
Inflated
Least
Admits
Action
Eclipse
Must
Celestial
Great
Actions

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Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
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The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.
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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.
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It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity.
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Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know.
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Teach me your mood, O patient stars. Who climb each night, the ancient sky. leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die.
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Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function living is the functionary.
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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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As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.
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Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
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We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
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The highest end of government is the culture of men.
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In America and Europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity.
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Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
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Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
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Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician.
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Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
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The vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought.
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It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.
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What we seek we shall find what we flee from flees from us.
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