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There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.

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
Past
Poet
Thought
Close
Also
Hundred
Soul
Joy
Mixed
Years
Says
Awe
World
Lying
Surprise
Three
Lived
Two
Lies

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Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.
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We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for thesalvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.
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The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
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Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.
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There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.
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Character wants room must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.
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Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.
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A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.
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The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
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The ocean is a large drop a drop is a small ocean.
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It is one soul which animates all men.
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Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
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Romeo, of dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,--than Romeo.
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A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Gods we worship write their names on our faces be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
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Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson