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There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education oftenlabors to silence and obstruct.

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
Wisdom
Common
Obstruct
Certain
Lowest
Men
Ordinary
Silence
Greatest
Humanity
Education

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What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.
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Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
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Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
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We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, forthat is a way of receiving it from ourselves but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living it.
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There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.
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Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.
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Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear.
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How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
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The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.
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There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.
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We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.
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We ascribe beauty to that which is simple which has no superfluous parts which exactly answers its end which stands related to all things which is the mean of many extremes.
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Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.
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For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys.
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You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
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Almost every man we meet requires some civility requires to be humored - he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.
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The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.
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A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.
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The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
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Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.
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