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Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

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
Freedom
Decorum
Strengthening
Develops
Iron
Wild
Conscience
Liberty
Law

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The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.
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Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
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In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.
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The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in... the part he plays.
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Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.
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The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.
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Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.
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Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.
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Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.
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Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep.
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Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.
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The most Indian thing about the Indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatched, but traits of character and sagacity, skill, or passion.
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Make youself necessary to someone.
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Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. It is so well, that it is sure that it will be well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power.
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Chiefly the sea-shore has been the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
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Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.
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Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth.
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In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
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