"The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 190 of 211)
4.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds!"
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"The have a good friend is one of the greatest delights of life."
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"The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature."
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"All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."
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"Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent."
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"Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior."
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"But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism."
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"I knew a witty physician who found theology in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was a disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian."
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"An expense of ends to means is fate;Morganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits."
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"Great conversation ... requires an absolute running of two souls into one."
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"The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science."
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"Great believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, fantastic, atheistic, and really men of no account. The spiritualist finds himself driven to express his faith by a series of skepticisms."
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"The only method to possess a buddy is always to be one."
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"A home kept to the end of display is impossible to all but a few women, and their success is dearly bought."
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"The House ...She lays her beams in music, In music everyone, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances around the sun- That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But for the love of happy souls Outlive the newest stars."
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"There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man."
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"The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships."
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"It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . ."
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"Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means."
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