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A good indignation makes an excellent speech.

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
Indignation
Excellent
Speech
Makes
Good

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.
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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Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we callFate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the state, the church, yea the friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal beside the sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so much fear, let it be respected.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Be yourself no base imitator of another, but your best self.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man complained that on his way home to dinner he had every day to pass through that long field of his neighbor's. I advised him to buy it, and it would never seem long again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is readyto sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Money is of no value it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill of the spender.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man's task [his 'great dream' and impassioned life-goal] is his life preserver.
Ralph Waldo Emerson