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Governments have their origin in the moral identity 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
Origin
Governments
Identity
Moral
Government
Men

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of going in for photography, you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tablets yet unbroken: The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No facts are to me sacred none are profane I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I like people who can do things
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Calmness is always godlike.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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One of our statesmen said, The curse of this country is eloquent men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The true poem is the poet's mind.
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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Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The soul is the perceiver and the revealer of truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,-- Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old? Or what was the service For which I was sold?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Books are the best of things, well used abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson