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By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

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
Going
Vision
Opinions
Never
Seen
Extremes
Thinking
Opinion
Unity
Two
Principle
Discordant
Thought
Step
Preclude
Stills
Steps
Reconciled
Still
Higher
Thoughtful
Back
Principles
Agreement

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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not Devil's wine, but God's wine.
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If it costs ten years, and ten to recover the general prosperity, the destruction of the South is worth so much.
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The walking of Man is falling forwards.
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Guard your own spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds.
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What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
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There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
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There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men.
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Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
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Do your thing, and I shall know you.
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It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.
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The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation when memory came, it was experience when mind acted, it was knowledge when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought.
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A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.
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We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves.
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Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
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Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.
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If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.
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When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him.
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Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear and you shall never find that perception again never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
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The dearest events are summer-rain.
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The population of the world is a conditional population these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live there shall be a better, please God.
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