Quote

A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single.

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
Results
Innumerable
Artist
Similar
Art
Abstract
Nature
Although
Different
Result
Work
Works
Miniature
World
Expression
Miniatures
Single
Epitome

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Never read any book that is not a year old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
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To be great, you must be misunderstood
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I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,--do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your mind than your brother or your child.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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One must be an inventor to read well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships.
Ralph Waldo Emerson