"The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 126 of 211)
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"Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament."
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"In certain men digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more ofthese drones perish, the better for the hive."
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"Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness."
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"Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody."
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"Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. One can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight."
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"The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we callFate."
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"Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature."
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"If I quake, what matters it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors."
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"Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency."
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"All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt."
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"Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring."
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"The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorageis quicksand."
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"In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing."
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"The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself."
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"In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God."
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"If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice."
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"There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself."
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"Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe."
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"Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within."
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