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I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men.

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
Evidence
Expression
Reference
Asks
Arguments
Thought
Helpless
Mean
Delight
Men
Dare
Think
Argument
Thinking
Telling

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For the world was built in order around the atoms march in tune Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them, and the moon.
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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.
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We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for thesalvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.
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A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior.
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Great men exist that there might be greater men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat self control is the rule. Anger is an uncontrollable feeling that betrays what you are when you are not yourself. Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason. Know this to be the enemy: it is anger, born of desire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?
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The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
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But we need not fear that we can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All the devils respect virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat I will not love you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are some men above grief and some men below it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson