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Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

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
Philosophy
Religion
History
Thinking
Revelation
Revelations
Insight
Tradition
Poetry

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Learn from it... tomorrow is a new day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.
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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Successful is the person who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of children, who leaves the world better than they found it, who has never lacked appreciation for the earth's beauty, who never fails to look for the best in others or give the best of themselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The key to every man is his thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Speech is better than silence silence is better than speech.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.
Ralph Waldo Emerson