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Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.

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
Stars
Renounce
Traverse
House
Board
Barn
Light
Roof
Barns
Truth
Boards
Deserts
Also
Desert
Comforts
Right
Bed
Acres
Star
Premature
Comfort
Lit
Acre

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Eyes...They speak all languages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You are constantly invited to be what you are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Skepticism is slow suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence andgood will at the heart of all things, and even higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Some eyes threaten like a loaded and levelled pistol, and others are as insulting as hissing or kicking some have no more expression than blueberries, while others are as deep as a well which you can fall into.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If with love thy heart has burned If thy love is unreturned Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our strength grows out of our weakness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson