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He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, God forbid! but to train away all impediment and mixture and leave nothing but pure power.

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
Well
Train
Nothing
Pure
Impediment
Made
Leave
Impediments
Good
Culture
Forbid
Men
Away
Mixture
Ends
Mixtures
Power
Determination
Wells
Destroy

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In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
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I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each ofthese works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken that act or step is the spiritual act all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.
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The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far.
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Speech is better than silence silence is better than speech.
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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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We don't grow old. When we cease to grow, we become old.
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We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
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Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
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We come to our own and would make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We can never part with it the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity!
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The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.
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Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed.
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Every wall is a door.
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That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.
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A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.
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Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show.
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Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.
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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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A man becomes what he thinks about most of the time
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What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
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