"In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men."
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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 113 of 211)
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"Men are so charmed with valor that they have pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, eagles and dragons, from the animals contemporary with us in the geologic formations."
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"To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them."
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"I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil.'"
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"What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?"
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"Today is a king in disguise."
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"Any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm."
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"There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men."
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"Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love."
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"The goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in nature which it subserves;such as we see in the sexual attraction."
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"No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you."
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"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage."
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"There are days when the great are near us, when there is no frown on their brow, no condescension even; when they take us by the hand, and we share their thought."
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"A moment is a concentrated eternity."
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"When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages."
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"A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams."
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"It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."
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"Every man who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground."
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"Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom."
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"It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march."
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