Quote

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

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
Reason
Respectable
Everything
Belly
Must
Perpetual
Make
Feed
Deny
Except
Food
Cannot

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The picture waits for my verdict it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
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Education should be as broad as man.
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He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, God forbid! but to train away all impediment and mixture and leave nothing but pure power.
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Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.
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A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.
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Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
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You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.
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But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.
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Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
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Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?
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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
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The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A strenuous soul hates cheap success.
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Character is that which can do without success.
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Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society, to be sure, does not like this very well it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world he declares all to be unfit to be his companions it is very uncivil, nay, insulting Society will retaliate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God you shall not have both.
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Thou art to me a delicious torment.
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But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.
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I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson