Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.

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• moments

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All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

• 118
• life

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Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

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• life

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Live, let live, and help live

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• life

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He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

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• learning

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It is not length of life, but depth of life.

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• life

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If we live truly, we shall see truly.

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• life

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Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

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• life

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Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

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• life

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Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

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• life

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Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

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• life

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Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

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• life

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Life too near paralyses art.

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• life

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With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

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• life

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Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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• life

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What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

• 1
• life

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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. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

• 1
• life

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The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

• life

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It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

• another

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Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

• actions

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As soon as there is life there is danger.

• danger

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A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

• chief

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To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

• success

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Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

• life

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Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

• life

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Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

• inspirational

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The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

• life

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Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

• life

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A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

• life

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Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

• life

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Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

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• patience

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The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

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• nature

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To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

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• nature

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A man is related to all nature.

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• nature

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Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

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• nature

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Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

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• wisdom

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In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

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• nature

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We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

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• nature

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Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of hidden stuff.

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• nature

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Nature... She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

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• nature

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Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

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• nature

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Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

• nature

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The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

• nature

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Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

• nature

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The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

• analyze

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Nature hates calculators.

• calculators

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Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

• nature

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We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

• nature

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Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.

• nature

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I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

• love

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Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

• nature

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We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

• nature

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When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

• work

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The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

• nature

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Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'

• nature

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Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

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• beauty

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The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

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• beauty

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Beauty rests on necessities.

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• beauty

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As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

• 2
• beauty

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Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

• 2
• beauty

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Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

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• flowers

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Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being:Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!I never sought to ask, I never knew:But, in my simple ignorance supposeThe selfsame power that brought me there brought you.

• beauty

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We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

• beauty

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Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

• beauty

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A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

• beauty

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As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

• beauty

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Beauty without expression is boring.

• beauty

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Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

• bait

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We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

• beauty

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Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

• beauty

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Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

• beauty

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Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.

• beauty

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A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.

• beauty

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It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

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• friends

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I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

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• friends

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A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

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• friends

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We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

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• friends

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Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

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• friends

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Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

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• friends

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The only way to have a friend is to be one.

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• friendship

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The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

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• friends

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He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

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• friends

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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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• friends

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Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

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• friends

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The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

• friends

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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

• friends

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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

• friends

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O friend, my bosom said,Through thee alone the sky is arched.Through thee the rose is red;All things through thee take nobler form,And look beyond the earth,The mill-round of our fate appearsA sun-path in thy worth.Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.

• friends

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What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, -- so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

• friends

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A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

• friendship

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A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

• friends

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Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

• friendship

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Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

• friendship

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The ancestor of every action is thought.

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• action

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Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

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• actions

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There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

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• actions

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We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

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• actions

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Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

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• actions

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We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

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• actions

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Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.

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• actions

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Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.

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• actions

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Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

• 1
• actions

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Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

• 1
• actions

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A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

• 1
• actions

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The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

• actions

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Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.

• actions

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Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

• actions

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Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

• words

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