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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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An eminent teacher of girls said, the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to Europe.
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The eye is easily frightened.
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So in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.
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To educate the wise man, the State exists and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State.
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The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned.
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Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
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There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all.
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The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
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Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
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We come to our own and would make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We can never part with it the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity!
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The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.
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Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
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Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow.
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The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
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Every advantage has its tax.
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And striving to be Man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
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A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.
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We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.
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The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
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