"That which builds is better than that which is built."
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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 89 of 211)
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"That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart."
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"The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball."
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"The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried."
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"Crime and punishment grow out of one stem."
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"Our moods do not believe in each other."
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"Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world."
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"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look,begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary!"
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"The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."
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"Find the journey's end in every step."
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"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force."
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"Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues."
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"He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness."
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"And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance."
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"It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views."
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"God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth."
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"Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim."
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"A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing."
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"It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands."
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"The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses."
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