Quote

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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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
Never
Society
Gains
Continual
Given
Fast
Advances
Art
Changes
Instincts
Else
Side
Civilized
Undergoes
Change
Loses
Acquire
Recedes
Thing
Sides
Arts
Acquires
Every
Rich
Scientific
Something
Taken
Instinct
Barbarous

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The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.
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I am a willow of the wilderness, Loving the wind that bent me.
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He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.
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Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.
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To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.
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Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat.
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The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect.
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Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
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How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.
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Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.
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I see my trees repair their boughs.
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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not Devil's wine, but God's wine.
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How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
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The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence.
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The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.
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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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Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches.
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So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
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It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
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Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.
Ralph Waldo Emerson