Quote

The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.

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
Worth
Drop
Goethe
Modern
Near
Ancients
Small
Related
Connectedness
Nature
Perception
Fruitful
Ever
Discovery
Explains
Thing
None
Discoveries
Men
Ocean
Vulgar
Genius
Shown
Moderns

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
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Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.
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A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
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A Judge may be a farmer but he is not to geld his own pigs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A friend is the hope of the heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The powers of the Soul are commensurate with its needs.
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I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is the dwarf of himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Who loses a day loses life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No matter how often defeated, you are born to victory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him[,] not the storm without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson