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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 stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.
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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Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My son, a perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life. You can never sympathize with me you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Homeopathy is insignificant as an act of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Books are the best of things if well used if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world is his who can see through its pretension.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To Be is to live with God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no person can sincerely try to help another without helping him or herself. Serve and you shall be served. If you love and serve people, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remuneration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson