Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Past
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The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.
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Be not the slave of your own past.
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But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
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Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.
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Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.
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With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
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A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.
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When a man becomes cultivated, he develops a new respect for who he is. This causes him to be ashamed of his past identification of himself and others according to things, i.e. property.
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It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history.
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The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be And life pulsates in rock or tree.
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All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.
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The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.
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The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web.
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I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.
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We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
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What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?
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There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.
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Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.
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It must be that when God speaketh, he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole.Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, - means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,-one as much as another. All things are disolved to ther center by thier cause.
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We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.
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This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.
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But dare rather to quit the platform, plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, & swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain & overlook the old. Trust your emotion.
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Whenever a mind is simple and receives an old wisdom, old things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,--one as much as another.
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We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.
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That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?
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Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? The sun shines today also.
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We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
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None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
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Power resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state.
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