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The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
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
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Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Control
Emergencies
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Lets
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Self
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More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the world loves a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes what a satire this is on government.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He in whom the love of truth predominates . . . submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion but he is a candidate for truth . . . and respects the highest law of his being.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Invention breeds invention.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men are better than this theology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Begin and proceed on a settled conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we walk in the woods, we must feed mosquitoes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is a search after power and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,-there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,-that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson