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What matters most is not what is behind us or before us, but what is within us.

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
Matters
Behinds
Behind
Within
Matter

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
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Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.
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Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man is a channel through which heaven floweth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our life seems not present, so much as prospective not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- flowingvigor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Yet America is a poem in our eyes its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
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Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.
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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.
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I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The primary wisdom is intuition.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson