Quote

A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac a talent for debate, disputant skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.

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
Culture
Powers
Reduces
Makes
Debate
Appealing
Money
Memory
Beggar
Power
Skills
Rank
Almanac
Men
Watches
Prisoner
Topical
Talent
Dominant
Invoking
Memories
Skill
Miser
Success
Aids
Misers

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
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Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
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Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.
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Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?
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Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness. Every secret crime has its reporter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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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Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Fear always springs from ignorance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson