Quote

Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.

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
Cannot
Feigned
Stills
Iliad
Still
Abolished
May
Pretension
Back
Authenticity
Real
Slavery
Never
Wrote
World
Greatness

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God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive.
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Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.
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Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.
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We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
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Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
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Every advantage has its tax.
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Society, to be sure, does not like this very well it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world he declares all to be unfit to be his companions it is very uncivil, nay, insulting Society will retaliate.
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Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
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Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.
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But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
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Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.
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Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
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A beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures it is the finest of fine arts.
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Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.
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Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
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You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of histuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop- windows.
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The only reward of virtue is virtue.
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The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
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Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.
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