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That man is idle who can do something better.
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
Idleness
Laziness
Idle
Better
Something
Men
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Only poetry inspires poetry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Youth is everywhere in place.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other you shall not see the face of man you shall not hear any name the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Two touch the string, The harp is dumb.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
