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

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I think all men know better than they do know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles but they darenot trust their presentiments.
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A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us.
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A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
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A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.
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Popularity is for dolls.
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When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.
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The bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they come under another.
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What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter's cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.
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Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.
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History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived.
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There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
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Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
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Though we travel the world over to find beauty, we must carry it with us or we find it not . . . The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference in beholders.
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Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood.
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Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
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To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine men.
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Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
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See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.
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