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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.

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
History
Gains
Nature
Material
Truth
Materials
Right
Conflict
Incessant
Mankind
Exhibits
Records
Steady
Moral
Gain
Interest
Interests

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When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?
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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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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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The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.
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The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, All summer in the field, and all winter in the study. And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.
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He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.
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Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might.
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The Sun is the sole inconsumable fireAnd God is the sole inexhaustible Giver.
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If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.
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I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.
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We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in education.
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A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.
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The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
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Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and concealments and partisanship never hurt by the treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul.
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All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration out there in history we can see its fatal strength.
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All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.
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Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
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Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul
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Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.
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Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
Ralph Waldo Emerson