Ralph Waldo Emerson

(90 votes)   So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(90 votes)   The future belongs to those who prepare for it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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(90 votes)   The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library: a company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years.... The thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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(89 votes)   Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(89 votes)   The only prudence in life is concentration.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(88 votes)   Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(88 votes)   These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(87 votes)   For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(87 votes)   If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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