Quote

In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

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
Opinion
Confession
Also
Warning
Seems
Status
Change
Rarely
Character
Spite
World
Painful
People
Seem
Warnings
Becomes
Occurs

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history isto be read and written.
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Obedience alone gives the right to command.
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All science is transcendental or else passes away.
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The eye is the best of artists.
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The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth.
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Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.
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There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.
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What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.
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It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.
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Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
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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.
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As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.
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There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.
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The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
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Religionists are clinging to little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law... while the laws of the Law, the great circling truths whose only adequate symbol is the material laws, the astronomy etc. are all unobserved, and sneered at when spoken of.
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The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
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Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one Nothing is fair or good alone.
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One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
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I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.
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