Quote

The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.

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
Private
Circumstances
Greatest
Proceeds
Action
Sentiment
May
Circumstance
Sentiments
Measure
Easily

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The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
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It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
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The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
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Knowledge is the only elegance.
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Love not the flower they pluck and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.
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The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.
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To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.
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We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
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Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
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Manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth.
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There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.
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Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
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Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
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Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually.
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Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
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He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
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The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.
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Headwinds are sore vexations and the more passengers the sorer.
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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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