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The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
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
Leads
Instinct
Essence
Genius
Source
Virtue
Call
Spontaneity
Life
Inquiry
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society does not love its unmaskers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot institute, without peril of charlatanism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? 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
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
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War, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead of their bowels.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wouldst thou shut up the avenues of ill, Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
