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Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.

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
Effects
Prayer
Means
Ends
Mean
Meanness
Theft
Effect
Private

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There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.
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I unsettle all things.
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The world exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty.
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The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
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Desire is possibility seeking expression.
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Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
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In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
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Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language - not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.
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When the night is darkest, the stars come out.
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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.
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Men are better than this theology.
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Character is always known. Thefts never enrich alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls.
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I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
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Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
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Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment that was older and awaited expectant these larger insights.
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Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.
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Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, culture corrects the theory of success.
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Money is of no value it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill of the spender.
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Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.
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Homeopathy is insignificant as an act of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
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