Quote

An expense of ends to means is fateMorganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits.

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
Ends
Powers
Snake
Form
Bills
Skulls
Character
Determine
Spine
Book
Forms
Snakes
Mean
Bird
Determines
Fate
Expense
Limits
Expenses
Menagerie
Means
Bill
Skull

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Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.
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When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?
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We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.
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We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.
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We find in life exactly what we put into it
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Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins
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Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.
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We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for thesalvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.
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He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.
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Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon flat and weak negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale, and unprofitable your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it.
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Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of going in for photography, you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try
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An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.
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When the night is darkest, the stars come out.
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There is health in table talk and nursery play. We must wear old shoes and have aunts and cousins.
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There are some men above grief and some men below it.
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Thefts never enrich alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie-for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance-will instantly vitiate the effect.
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Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
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Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.
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it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.
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