Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Inspiration
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The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.
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As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
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Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
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It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
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Self-trust is the first secret of success.
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A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us.
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The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom.
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As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.
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The world belongs to the energetic.
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The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
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It is not length of life, but depth of life.
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Books are for nothing but to inspire
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What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.
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Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?
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Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.
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Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend
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All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.
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We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
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The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of thehuman mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstacy.
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To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
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I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill,--at the end of life just ready to be born,--affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.
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Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
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Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.
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The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
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Poets should be law-givers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work.
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Hitch your wagon to a star.
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Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
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We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
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The only way to have a friend is to be one.
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To be great is to be misunderstood.
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