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We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, the italics are ours.

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
Much
Writer
Quotations
Recited
Eyes
Passage
Borrows
Interest
Informed
Selects
Eye
Journal
Originates
Read
Passages
Journals
Sense
Poets
Quotation
Wells
Poet
Fervent
Well
Genius
Rendering
Italics

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is always childish, and with each new gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Well, the world has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is always safety in valor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love Him was happiness--to love Him in others' virtues.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Bhagavad-Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged montheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is with a good book as it is with good company.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our distrust is very expensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson