Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essayist, Philosopher, Poet

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th-century American essayist and philosopher known for his ideas on individualism and nature, particularly in his work 'Self-Reliance.'

Born
May 25, 1803
Died
April 27, 1882
Quotes
4.2K
Rank
#45

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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 153 of 211)

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"Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are."

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"Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die."

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"The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee."

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"All vigor is contagious."

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"A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene."

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"Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back."

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"Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character."

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"The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust."

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"Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question."

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"After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning, excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death."

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"Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning."

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"Old & New put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion & the color of the flake: Antiquity, its form & properties. All things wear a luster which is the gift of the present & a tarnish of time."

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"It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself."

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"I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?"

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"England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them."

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"Something is wanting to science until it has been humanised."

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"The age of puberty is a crisis in the age of man worth studying. It is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious; from thesleep of passions to their rage."

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"The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small."

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"The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle."

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