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In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.

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
Figure
Infinite
Figures
Choice
Struggle
Choices
World
People
Struggling

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.
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Every reform was once a private opinion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
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There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is a new method.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Ability without honor has no value.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are imprisoned in life in the company of persons powerfully unlike us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Gods we worship write their names on our faces be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson