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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I didn't find my friends the good Lord gave them to me.
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Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought for causes which are unpenetrated.
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Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers
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Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration they have a light, and know not whence it comes, and call it their own their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease.
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Knowledge is the only elegance.
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Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.
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A human being should beware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults.
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When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?
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Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
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Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.
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Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
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A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him a defect pays him revenues on the other side.
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When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
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All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature.
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People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
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The only reward of virtue is virtue.
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Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
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Happy is the hearing man unhappy the speaking man.
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I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
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Thefts never enrich alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie-for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance-will instantly vitiate the effect.
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