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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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The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Invention breeds invention.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He that despiseth small things will perish by little and little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Stand guard at the portal of your mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's revenge for this humanity.What manner of man does science make? The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as my professor is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the keys of our own nature.
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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Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The powers of the Soul are commensurate with its needs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, All summer in the field, and all winter in the study. And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson