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For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

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
First
Genius
Strokes
World
Word
Speakers
Though
Origin
Symbolized
Moment
Currency
Hearer
Words
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Language
Brilliant
Moments
Forgotten
Stroke
Firsts
Picture
Speaker

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The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
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Life is too short to waste.
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The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed. Each material thing has its celestial side has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any other.
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Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
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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.
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Any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.
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Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.
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I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.
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It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple.
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This very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
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Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.
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We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
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My garden is a forest ledge Which older forest s bound The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound!
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Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, so hot? my little Sir.
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All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.
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What you do thunders above your head so loudly, I cannot hear the words you speak.
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For he that feeds men serveth few He serves all who dares be true.
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I like people who can do things
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The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
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We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
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