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I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.
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
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Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Instead
Spartan
Hear
Gong
Days
Gongs
Heard
Whistle
Lasts
Consistency
Last
Conformity
Hope
Ridiculous
Henceforward
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Dinner
Fife
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You think me the child of circumstance I make my circumstance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The dearest events are summer-rain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or place.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought for causes which are unpenetrated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter's cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson