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We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man.

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
Food
Fire
Men
Sympathy
Higher

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Look out! Behind you!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Everything has its price - and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained... it is impossible to get anything without this price.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every time you wink the stars move.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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
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Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
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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Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson