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You can only live for yourself: Your action is good only whilst it is alive—whilst it is in you. The awkward imitation of it by your child or your disciple, is not a repetition of it, is not the same thing but another thing. The new individual must work out the whole problem of science, letters, and theology for himself, can owe his fathers nothing.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Journals (1822)

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Divinity College Address (1838)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Poems (1847)

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

The Method of Nature (1841)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.