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The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

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
Hundred
Lines
Tacks
Best
Zigzag
Voyage
Voyages
Ship
Ships
Line

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Really, all things and persons are related to us, but according to our nature, they act on us not at once, but in succession, andwe are made aware of their presence one at a time. All persons, all things which we have known, are here present, and many more than we see the world is full.
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The gates of thought, - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open.
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There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all.
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The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.
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Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.
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With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.
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My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
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How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself when he loses himself in the crowd when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.
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A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
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The religions we call false were once true.
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The life of man is a self-evolving circle.
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The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
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My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said that words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption.
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That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.
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The simplest words,--we do not know what they mean except when we love and aspire.
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We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.
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Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
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A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment and even obstacles and opposition will but make us like the fabled specter-ships, which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
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The cardinal virtue of a teacher [is] to protect the pupil from his own influence.
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Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson