Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Wisdom
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Life is a festival only to the wise.
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Every moment instructs, and every object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after long time.
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Wise men are not wise at all times.
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Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
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The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.
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To live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
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There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant
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Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.
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More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.
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Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books.
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It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.
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Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.
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The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child.
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Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?
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Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
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It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True geniuswill not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new sense. If a wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guarantees of condition.
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Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.
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Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
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Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.
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To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.
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If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
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To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
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There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.
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The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
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Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.
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The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
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Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
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Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.
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A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.
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To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State.
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