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People who know how to act are never preachers.

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
Preachers
Preacher
Never
People

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The secret of success in education is respecting the students.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary.
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Every man believes he has a greater possibility.
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Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.
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Far or forgot to me is near Shadow and sunlight are the same The vanished gods to me appear And one to me are shame and fame.They reckon ill who leave me out When me they fly, I am the wings I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Henceforth, please God, forever I forego the yolk of men's opinions. I will be light-hearted as a bird and live with God. I find him in the bottom of my heart, and I hear continually his voice therein.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,-- Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old? Or what was the service For which I was sold?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Most people, who have quit smoking, have had at least one unsuccessful try in the past. It is not important how many times you try to quit. The only important thing is, that eventually you stay quit
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson