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Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

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
Magnifying
Degrade
Trifles
Cities

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All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us in other words, to engage us to obey.
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How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself when he loses himself in the crowd when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.
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Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
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We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.
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Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function living is the functionary.
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What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
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It is about your outlook towards life. You can either regret or rejoice.
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Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.
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What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.
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Commerce is of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
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It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.
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The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. He becomes acquainted with the resistances and with his own tools increases his skill and strength and learns the favorable moments and favorable accidents.
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When some external event raises your spirits and you think good days are preparing for you, do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
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Thought is the seed of action.
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Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
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When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
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All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.
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Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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How much finer things are in composition than alone.
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Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.
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