Quotes by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on honesty   

"Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on honesty
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"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on honor
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"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on humankind   

"There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on humor
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"At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on hypocrisy
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"We are prisoners of ideas."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on ideas   

"It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on ideas
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"Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on ideas   

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"There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on ideas   

"That man is idle who can do something better."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on idleness
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"What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imagination   

"The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imagination   

"We live by our imagination, our admiration s, and our sentiments."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imagination   

"Science does not know its debt to imagination."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imagination   

"There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imagination
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"Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imagination   

"Imitation is suicide."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on imitation   

"Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on immortality
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"Every man is an impossibility until he is born."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on impossibility   

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"Our expenses are all for conformity."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on individuality   

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on individuality
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"Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on influence   

"The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on influence
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"Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on influence   

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"Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on inheritance   

"The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on inspiration   

"A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on instinct   

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"An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on institutions   

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on integrity
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"In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on integrity
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"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals   

"If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"We lie in the lap of immense intelligence."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Everything intercepts us from ourselves."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intervention   

"If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intuition   

"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."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on invention and inventor   

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on kindness
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