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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
Literature
Eavesdropping

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also as the green grass.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Books are the best of things, well used abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man's actions are the picture book of his creeds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature is too thin a screen the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Your actions speak so loud, I can't hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson