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Commonsense is the wick of the candle.

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
Inspirational
Wick
Commonsense
Candle

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men - that is genius... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist... What I must do, is all that concerns me not what the people think... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself nothing, but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Isolation must precede true society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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
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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
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The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Read proudly--put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make-believe I am charmed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All men are poets at heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Knowledge is the antidote to fear
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole the wise silence the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related the eternal One.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do not to work, but to be worked upon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson