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Every man has a choice between love of truth and love of repose. Love of repose brings him a solid reputation and peaceful life love of truth keeps him in suspense. A man who loves truth respects the highest law of his being.

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
Choices
Solid
Law
Peaceful
Truth
Reputation
Every
Keeps
Men
Brings
Love
Loves
Suspense
Life
Choice
Respects
Highest
Repose

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The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.
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What is there of the divine in a load of brick? What ... in a barber shop? ... Much. All.
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If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.
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Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.
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Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
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In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.
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Every man is a channel through which heaven floweth.
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Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
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If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?
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Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.
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Intemperance is the only vulgarity.
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I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
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I honor health as the first Muse.
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If you take in a lie, you must take in all that belongs to it.
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Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.
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There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
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The most Indian thing about the Indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatched, but traits of character and sagacity, skill, or passion.
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I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.
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A little integrity is better than any career.
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Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
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