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

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer.
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The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
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Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.
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Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
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It is a capital blunder as you discover, when another man recites his charities.
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The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
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Beauty brings its own fancy price, for all that a man hath will he give for his love.
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The intellectual man requires a fine bait the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.
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Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter's cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.
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Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.
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Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: lends her all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg , and his whole body to irresistible destruction.
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Cupid is a casuist, a mystic, and a cabalist,-- Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device, . . . . All things wait for and divine him,-- How shall I dare to malign him?
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Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.
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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not Devil's wine, but God's wine.
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All things are moral and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life has a way of demanding that you live it.
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If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.
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Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson