Quote

Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition, to understand any thing rightly.

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
Hard
Chains
Avenges
Must
Condition
Geniality
Thing
Wave
Speedily
Every
Conditions
Avenging
Would
Taken
Pedantry
Knowledge
Rightly
Understand
Chain
Nature
Waves

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He only is right who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded by worry, fret and anxiety. Finish every day, and be done with it. You have done what you could.
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For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable.
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Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
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A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.
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When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are.
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The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
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An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye it transcends speech it is the bodily symbol of identity.
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The world is his who can see through its pretension.
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We are always getting ready to live but never living.
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The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.
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We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
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Tis curious that we only believe as deeply as we live.
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If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The inmost in due time becomes the outmost.
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It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.
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As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.
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We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Thought is the seed of action but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.
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Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.
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If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.
Ralph Waldo Emerson