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The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.

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
Influence
Greatest
Space
Idea
Action
Vast
Ideas
Leaves
Men
Track
World
Mark

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Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.
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It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.
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When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
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The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves the man is lost.
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Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.
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What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?
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Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?
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The only prudence in life is concentration.
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Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.
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The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.
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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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It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
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Skepticism is slow suicide.
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Character teaches above our wills.
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There is properly no history, only biography.
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The man for whom the law exists - the man of forms, the conservative - is a tame man.
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Each man has an aptitude born with him. Do your work.
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The value of a dollar is to buy just things a dollar goes on increasing in value with all the genius and all the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university is worth more than a dollar in a jail in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding community than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic are in constant play.
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Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.
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For the resolute and determined, there is time and opportunity.
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