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Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function living is the functionary.

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
Higher
Living
Character
Thinking
Functionary
Intellect
Function

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The age of puberty is a crisis in the age of man worth studying. It is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious from thesleep of passions to their rage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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
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The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are some men above grief and some men below it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The life of man is a self-evolving circle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Human society is made up of partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which, if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other citizen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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America means opportunity, freedom, power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not Devil's wine, but God's wine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson