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The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.

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
Longer
Passings
Wand
Imagination
Demands
Wands
Beautiful
Begins
Statue
Defined
Incomprehensible
Passing
Measuring
Active
Statues
Criticism
Compass
Demand
Sculpture

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant is the lord that shall be.
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There is no architect Can build as the Muse can She is skilful to select Materials for her plan.
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He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.
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The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast the first a handful.
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Among the map makers of each generation are the risk takers, those who see the opportunities, seize the moment and expand man's vision of the future
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Power resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In strict science, all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining forthe metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Earth's a howling wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.
Ralph Waldo Emerson