"I am become a transparent eyeball."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 88 of 211)
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"Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor."
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"The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design,--he will presently undervalue the actual object."
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"Earth's a howling wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force."
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"America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous."
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"Skepticism? Yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours."
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"Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality."
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"There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty."
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"The world we live in is but thickened light."
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"There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,--now under one disguise, now under another,--like a police in citizen's clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time."
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"Only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise beforea man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison."
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"And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim."
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"Treat your friend as a spectacle."
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"'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some piece of liberal study to rescue the hours which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal from the best economist."
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"Great thoughts ensure musical expression."
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"Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives."
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"A child convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. The reward for a thing well done, is to have done it."
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"The only true gifts are a portion of yourself."
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"I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read."
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"Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet."
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