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  • Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes   4214
  • Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Art Quotes , Taken Quotes
  • Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Wise Quotes , Fashion Quotes
  • Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Education Quotes , Heart Quotes
  • At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Children Quotes , Men Quotes
  • The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Art Quotes , Creativity Quotes