"Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 166 of 211)
4.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy."
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"My doom and my strength is to be solitary."
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"But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation."
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"The eye is the best of artists."
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"Virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill; she is rapt and doth refuse to wait a painter's will."
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"But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art."
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"I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculptureand painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry."
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"It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy."
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"I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are."
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"For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached."
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"Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power."
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"When there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise,--so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother."
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"A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level."
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"I quote another man's saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me."
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"A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out."
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"Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest."
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"Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear."
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"The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return."
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"There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified."
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