Quote

And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.

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
Within
Picture
Finer
Desire
Perfection
Whilst
Inspirational
Flower
Outward
Without
Genius
Copy
Looks
Cause
Copies
Things
Talent
Inward
Love
Goes
Draw
Impersonal
Life
Causes
Draws
Proceeds

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every thing admonishes us how needlessly long life is.
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If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture.
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Power is what they want, not candy-power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied.
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He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that.
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Men are better than this theology.
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I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
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He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation but he shuts the door of truth.
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Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of themanly contemplation of the whole.
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Knowledge is when you learn something new every day. Wisdom is when you let something go every day.
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The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary.
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He, who loves the bristle of bayonets, only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his hand.
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The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not.
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What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.
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The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also.
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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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O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
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I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.
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Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function living is the functionary.
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Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.
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Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.
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