"Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no character until seen with the shore or the ship."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 185 of 211)
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"Can rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await? He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence Of landscape and of sky And tender to the spirit-touch Of man's or maiden's eye."
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"An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop."
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"Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds."
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"There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly."
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"An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature."
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"It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students."
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"Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show."
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"He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization."
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"Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit."
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"The advantage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir."
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"We honor the rich because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper to man, proper to us."
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"Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men."
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"But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man."
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"Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only through the most poetic forms; but first and last, it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact."
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"The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them."
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"Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health; or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat."
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"Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?"
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"In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families."
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"For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue."
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