Quote

The vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought.

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
Conversation
Obscene
Becomes
Excluded
Words
Vocabulary
Thought
Polite
Even
Spoken
Would
Base
Connexion
Men
Images
Illustrious
Embrace
Omniscient

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I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.
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All mankind love a lover.
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I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
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Whom God has put asunder, why should man put together?
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The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
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If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
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The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.
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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.
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Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.
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The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
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He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.
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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
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It is with a good book as it is with good company.
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In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.
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Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.
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The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.
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Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.
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The French woman says, 'I am a woman and a Parisienne, and nothing foreign to me appears altogether human.'
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Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?
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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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