Quote

Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars merchants have let them give them. Farmers will give corn poets will sing women will sew laborers will lend a hand the children will bring flowers.

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
Work
Hand
Charity
Inconvenient
Way
Hands
Folks
Merchants
Give
Sing
Lend
Good
Women
Dollars
Corn
Think
Come
Flower
Folk
Thinking
Country
Poet
Farmers
Giving
Bring
Poets
Children
Virtue
Flowers
Laborers

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Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle platonizes.
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A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that,and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.
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First be a good animal.
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So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
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Thought is the seed of action but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.
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In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.
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All the elements, whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become big masters.
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You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
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There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men.
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The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
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Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.
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The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
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The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
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Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
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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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It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students.
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Justice satisfies everybody, and justice alone.
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The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go.
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Such is the active power of good temperament! Great sweetness of temper neutralizes such vast amounts of acid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson