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Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual

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
Voice
Individual
Heroism
Great
Contradiction
Good
Obedience
Time
Impulse
Works
Mankind
Secret

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The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.
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Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.
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The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
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Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times.
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The greatest genius is the most indebted person.
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It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.
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I covet truth beauty is unripe childhood's cheat I leave it behind with the games of youth.
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We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
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Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
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It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
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There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.
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There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.
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Fashion understands itself good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.
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A man builds a fine house and now he has a master, and a task for life.
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Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.
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Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.
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Guard your own spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds.
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Do your work, but do your thing.
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Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his.
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Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function living is the functionary.
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