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"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one."
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Essays (Emerson)This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not y — Essays (Emerson)
"This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. 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. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn."
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Essays (Emerson)
Essays (Emerson)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote several books of essays, commonly associated with transcendentalism and romanticism. "Essays" most commonly refers to his first two series of essays:Essays: First Series
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"I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them."
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Essays (Emerson)Quote
"My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one."
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Essays (Emerson)Quote
"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great."
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Essays (Emerson)Quote
"We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected"
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Essays (Emerson)Quote
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual & in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
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Essays (Emerson)