"No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 106 of 211)
4.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity"
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"I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons."
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"Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody."
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"Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?"
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"But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries."
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"A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life."
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"My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady."
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"We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power."
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"There is a crack in everything God has made"
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"You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong."
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"The world when seen through a little child's eyes, greatly resembles paradise. Happiness is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway. This time, like all time, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it."
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"Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too."
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"Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting."
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"Nothing can be preserved that is not good."
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"It is never too late to do right."
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"Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes."
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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."
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"If you cannot be free be as free as you can."
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"Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rootedlike oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever."
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