"In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 99 of 211)
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"Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it."
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"We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables."
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"Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise."
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"The basis of good manners is self-reliance."
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"The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character."
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"Excellence is the new forever."
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"Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon."
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"Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?"
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"The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him."
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"One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is the new science of Statistics."
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"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth."
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"All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe."
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"In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking."
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"Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom."
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"It is time to be old To take in sail."
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"Headwinds are sore vexations and the more passengers the sorer."
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"Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut."
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"Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings."
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"Every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?"
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