Quote

The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.

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
Door
Shrivel
Doors
Sectarian
Church
Dried
Read
Impunity
Cannot
Astronomy
Like
Creeds
Narrow
Leaves
Observatory

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We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, the italics are ours.
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Railroad iron is a magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.
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There is no calamity that right words will not begin to redress
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All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.
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An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye it transcends speech it is the bodily symbol of identity.
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But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not Devil's wine, but God's wine.
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Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
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Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.
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Nature tells every secret once.
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There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education oftenlabors to silence and obstruct.
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Poets should be law-givers that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work.
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If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect.
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It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men in their religion in their education in their pursuits their modes of living their association in their property in their speculative views.
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Power ceases in the instant of repose it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.
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The soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
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No matter how often defeated, you are born to victory.
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Be an opener of doors
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A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
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I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson