Quote

All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us in other words, to engage us to obey.

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
Way
Aims
Obey
Engage
Aim
Reform
Particular
Words
Soul

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To be great, you must be misunderstood
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A fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.
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Headwinds are sore vexations and the more passengers the sorer.
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We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.
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Conformity is the ape of harmony.
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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.
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A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.
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Society cannot do without cultivated men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become imperative.
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Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, culture corrects the theory of success.
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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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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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The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.
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Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
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We acquire the strength we have overcome.
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It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.
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Every man who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground.
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The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.
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Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man's habitual preference of the general good to his own but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration.
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But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.
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I can believe a miracle because I can raise my own arm. I can believe a miracle because I can remember. I can believe it because I can speak and be understood by you.
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