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A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

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
Purpose
Happiness
Faces
Indicates
Success
Attained
Culture
Cheerful
Nature
Intelligent
Ends
Wisdom
Enough
Face

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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.
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The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
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There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.
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In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate.
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I am not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to oneform a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.
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Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.
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One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars
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The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
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Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.
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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
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If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
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Some men, at the approach of a dispute, neigh like horses.
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Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
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It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.
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The boxer's ring is the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been developed.
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...man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the center of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man.
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The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible.
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Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.
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The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.
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