Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essayist, Philosopher, Poet

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th-century American essayist and philosopher known for his ideas on individualism and nature, particularly in his work 'Self-Reliance.'

Born
May 25, 1803
Died
April 27, 1882
Quotes
4.2K
Rank
#45

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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 90 of 211)

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"Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary."

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"I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to seserve that you should."

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"If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak."

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"The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps."

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"I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me."

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"We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person."

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"But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself."

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"Every advantage has its tax."

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"The walking of Man is falling forwards."

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"Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest."

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"I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable."

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"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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"What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon."

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"O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched. Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair."

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"The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed."

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"If with love thy heart has burned; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed; For when love has once departed From the eyes of the false-hearted, And one by one has torn off quite The bandages of purple light; Though thou wert the loveliest Form the soul had ever dressed, Thou shalt seem, in each reply, A vixen to his altered eye; Thy softest pleadings seem too bold, Thy praying lute will seem to scold; Though thou kept the straightest road, Yet thou errest far and broad."

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"We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts."

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"The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime."

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"The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting."

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