Quote

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

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An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
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An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.
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What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.
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We never touch but at points.
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When all shoot at one mark, the gods join in the combat.
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O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.
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Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
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For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.
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My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said that words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption.
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A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.
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Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.
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Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers
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Knowledge is the antidote to fear. [especially as fear often stands for false evidence appearing real!]
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Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know
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Art, in the artist, is proportion, or, a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes.
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When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
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Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
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The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
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