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Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.

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
Trying
Aims
Believe
Sentiments
Men
Aim
Think
Divine
Thinking
Education
High
Speak
Power
Renounce

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
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The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded every sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.
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Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Fear God, and where you go men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Tomorrow is a new day begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He that despiseth small things will perish by little and little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is as lazy as he dares to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man becomes what he thinks about most of the time
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns from yachting or planting is the manners of Nature patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water.
Ralph Waldo Emerson