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a good reader makes a good book

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
Reader
Makes
Book
Good

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If I am the devil's child, I will live then, by the devil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle everything else is an intrigue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What matters most is not what is behind us or before us, but what is within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We pass for what we are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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
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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Love should make joy but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Bhagavad-Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged montheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson