"It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 32 of 211)
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"Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast; the first a handful."
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"We change whether we like it or not."
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"Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds."
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"Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world."
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"The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake."
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"Be an opener of doors"
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"Self trust is the essence of heroism."
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"The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by redemption of the soul."
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"We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry."
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"I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances."
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"Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture."
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"The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base."
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"How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown."
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"There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law."
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"The religions we call false were once true."
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"Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour."
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"Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get."
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"People destined to meet will do so, apparently by chance, at precisely the right moment."
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"It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
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