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We can only obey our own polarity.

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
Polarity
Obey
Fate

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.
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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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Self-command is the main elegance.
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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
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Society does not love its unmaskers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we callFate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We take care of our health we lay up money we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
Ralph Waldo Emerson