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Literature is eavesdropping.

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
Eavesdropping
Literature

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Contemporary American psychiatrist It is a happy talent to know how to play.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Knowledge is when you learn something new every day. Wisdom is when you let something go every day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We may be partial, but Fate is not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our distrust is very expensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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America means opportunity, freedom, power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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By virtue of the Deity thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance,--what ample borrowers of eternity they are!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson