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What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?

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
Obeyed
Materials
City
Cities
Men
Incongruous
Aggregate

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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.
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I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.
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We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.
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Character teaches above our wills.
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Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist.
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But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.
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It does not to dwell on dreams and forget to live, but it is equally foolish to ignore the past – never forget.
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This very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
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it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.
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Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.
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Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto
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My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
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The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.
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Fear always springs from ignorance.
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The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - Let there be truth between us two forevermore.
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It is not length of life, but depth of life.
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Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear and you shall never find that perception again never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
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If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.
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The universe is represented in every one of it's particles. Everything is made of one hidden stuff. The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God appears with all His parts in every moss and cobweb.
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The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities.
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