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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.

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
Trust
Better
Men
Think
Thinking
Baubles
Commend
Carts
Institutions

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.
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Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.
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If it costs ten years, and ten to recover the general prosperity, the destruction of the South is worth so much.
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There is always a best way of doing everything.
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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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Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.
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The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
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The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
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The picture waits for my verdict it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
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I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.
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I quote another man's saying unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me.
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For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.
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A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.
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But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?
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For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.
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The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.
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It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson