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

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Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
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Romeo, of dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,--than Romeo.
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To live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
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The mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose.
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Pictures must not be too picturesque.
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Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.
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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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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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He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.
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Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions.
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If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.
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The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
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But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.
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Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less I have more clothes, but am nit so warm more armor, but less courage more books, but less wit.
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I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil.
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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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Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.
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Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
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Love is our highest word and the synonym of God.
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