Quote

The student is to read history actively and not passively to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.

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
Life
Thus
Commentary
Students
Actively
Respect
Utter
Books
Muse
Read
Compelled
History
Text
Book
Student
Passively
Never
Esteem
Oracles

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What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
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For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.
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Any work looks wonderful to me except the one which I can do.
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Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.
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From Washington, proverbially the city of distances, through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.
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The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
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Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.
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Our prayers are prophets.
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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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The religions we call false were once true.
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It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.
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Good criticism is very rare and always precious.
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I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.
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The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community
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One can never truly savor success until first tasting adversity.
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Blessed are those who have no talent!
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Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency.
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I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
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Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins
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Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub.
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