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The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman.
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
Power
Flowering
Men
Accomplishment
Gentleman
Finished
Civilization
Grace
Social
Sense
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power is the first good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules something intelligible of the guidance of suitors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men are better than this theology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be a gift and a benediction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thefts never enrich alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie-for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance-will instantly vitiate the effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Astrology is astronomy brought down to Earth and applied toward the affairs of men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not a ray is dimmed, not an atom worn nature's oldest force is as good as new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A scholar is a man with his inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson