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A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.

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
Subject
Subjects
Find
Great
Thing
Make
Men
Scholarship

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The forest is my loyal friend A Delphic shrine to me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every calamity is a spur and a valuable hint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author and my business with him is to find my own, though itwere only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society, to be sure, does not like this very well it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world he declares all to be unfit to be his companions it is very uncivil, nay, insulting Society will retaliate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward in talent from without inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and... Nature, the sun and moon, the animals, the water and stones, which should be their toys.
Ralph Waldo Emerson