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A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us.

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
Cathedrals
Done
Affirms
Cathedral
Gothic

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.
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Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
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It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air, landscape, and bodily exercise on the mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every stoic was a stoic but in Christendom where is the Christian?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is a crack in everything God has made
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
Ralph Waldo Emerson