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When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

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
Private
Kings
Lustre
Views
Transferred
Shall
Gentlemen
Action
Gentleman
Men
Originals
Original
Actions

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A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.
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Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
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The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.
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Things bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence.
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An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.
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The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh.
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The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
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The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
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Spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. True prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world.
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Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, and these must.
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Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might.
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Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
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The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.
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Romeo, of dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,--than Romeo.
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A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.
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The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
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The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.
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The House ...She lays her beams in music, In music everyone, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances around the sun- That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But for the love of happy souls Outlive the newest stars.
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