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Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

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
Alienation
Intervention
Everything

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
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Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.
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A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.
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The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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How much of human life is lost in waiting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature.
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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
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Do what you're afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson