Quote

In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.

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
True
Definitions
Cannot
Invisible
Without
God
Real
Meaning
Executes
Mean
Works
Grope
Law
Conceived
Spiritual
Describing
Means
Existing

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The quality of the thought differences the Egyptian and the Roman, the Austrian and the American.
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Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
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Books are the best of things if well used if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
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To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
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The dearest events are summer-rain.
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The longer we live the more we must endure the elementary existence of men and women and every brave heart must treat society asa child, and never allow it to dictate.
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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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The terrors of the child are quite reasonable, and add to his loveliness for his utter ignorance and weakness, and his enchanting indignation on such a small basis of capital compel every bystander to take his part.
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Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.
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Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
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It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works.
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My life should be unique it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
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Everything intercepts us from ourselves.
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Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.
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Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.
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All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.
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Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.
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The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere only the low habits need palaces and banquets.
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I honor health as the first Muse.
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Almost every man we meet requires some civility requires to be humored - he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.
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