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I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

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
Wish
River
Mother
Originals
Book
Tongue
Think
Rivers
Thinking
Across
Rendered
Soon
Charles
Books
Boston
Reading
Swimming

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The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.
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The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
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A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.
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The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.
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A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.
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Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.
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Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.
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And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
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Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
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If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.
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In analysing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.
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An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye it transcends speech it is the bodily symbol of identity.
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But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Bobinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing.
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Knowledge is the only elegance.
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The merit claimed for the Anglican Church is that, if you let it alone, it will let you alone.
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Meek young men grow up in libraries.
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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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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
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If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
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