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Beware Of Too Much Good Staying In Your Hand. It Will Fast Corrupt And Worm Worms. Pay It Away Quickly In Some Sort.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beware Of Too Much

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beware Of Too Much Good Staying In Your Hand. It Will Fast Corrupt And Worm Worms. Pay It Away Quickly In Some Sort.
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Doom
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Apology
Men
Walking Has The Best Value As Gymnastics Of The Mind.
Gymnastics
Mind
Walking
Frankness Invites Frankness.
Trust
Truth
Honesty
There Is Always Safety In Valor.
Safety
Valor
The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zigzag Line Of A Hundred Tacks. See The Line From A Sufficient Distance And It Straightens Itself To The Average Tendency.
Distance
Average
Lines
Whenever The Pulpit Is Usurped By A Formalist, Then Is The Worshipper Defrauded And Disconsolate.
Pulpit
Worshippers
These Times Of Ours Are Series And Full Of Calamity, But All Times Are Essentially Alike. As Soon As There Is Life There Is Danger.
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Danger
Calamity
Fear Is Cruel And Mean. The Political Reigns Of Terror Have Been Reigns Of Madness And Malignity,--a Total Perversion Of Opinion;society Is Upside Down, And Its Best Men Are Thought Too Bad To Live.
Fear
Mean
Men
The Genius Of Reading And Of Gardening Are Antagonistic, Like Resinous And Vitreous Electricity. One Is Concentrative In Sparks And Shocks: The Other Is Diffuse Strength; So That Each Disqualifies Its Workman For The Other's Duties.
Reading
Gardening
Genius
All Necessary Truth Is Its Own Evidence.
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Truth Is
Evidence
Welcome Evermore To Gods And Men Is The Self-helping Man.
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Self
Helping
The Orator Is Thereby An Orator That Keeps His Feet Ever On A Fact.
Feet
Facts
Preaching
But If A Man Would Be Alone, Let Him Look At The Stars. The Rays That Come From Those Heavenly Worlds, Will Separate Between Him And Vulgar Things.
Stars
Men
Rays
We Live In Succession, In Division, In Parts, In Particles. Meantime Within Man Is The Soul Of The Whole; The Wise Silence; The Universal Beauty, To Which Every Part And Particle Is Equally Related, The Eternal One. And This Deep Power In Which We Exist And Whose Beatitude Is All Accessible To Us, Is Not Only Self-sufficing And Perfect In Every Hour, But The Act Of Seeing And The Thing Seen, The Seer And The Spectacle, The Subject And The Object, Are One. We See The World Piece By Piece, As The Sun, The Moon, The Animal, The Tree; But The Whole, Of Which These Are Shining Parts, Is The Soul.
Life
Wise
Animal
Science Was False By Being Unpoetical. It Assumed To Explain A Reptile Or A Mollusk, And Isolated It-which Is Hunting For Life In Graveyards. Reptile Or Mollusk Or Man Or Angel Only Exists In System, In Relation.
Angel
Science
Men
How Painful To Give A Gift To Any Person Of Sensibility, Or Of Equality! It Is Next Worst To Receiving One
Pain
Giving
Receiving
And I Myself, In Rome, Heard It Said Openly In The Streets, "if There Is A Hell, Then Rome Is Built On It." Martin Luther, Against The Roman Papacy, An Institution Of The Devil London Is The Epitome Of Our Times, And The Rome Of To-day.
Rome
Devil
London
Let Us Be Silent — So We May Hear The Whisper Of The Gods.
Life
God
Angel
Slavery It Is That Makes Slavery; Freedom, Freedom. The Slavery Of Women Happened When The Men Were Slaves Of Kings.
Kings
Women
Slavery
For Every Minute You Remain Angry, You Give Up Sixty Seconds Of Peace Of Mind.
Inspirational
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Forgiveness
The Narrow Sectarian Cannot Read Astronomy With Impunity. The Creeds Of His Church Shrivel Like Dried Leaves At The Door Of The Observatory.
Doors
Church
Astronomy
Have Mountains, And Waves, And Skies, No Significance But What We Consciously Give Them, When We Employ Them As Emblems Of Our Thoughts?
Sky
Giving
Mountain
Thoughts Come Into Our Minds By Avenues Which We Never Left Open, And Thoughts Go Out Of Our Minds Through Avenues Which We Never Voluntarily Opened.
Feel Good
Mind
Avenues
A Few Years Ago, The Liberal Churches Complained That The Calvinistic Church Denied To Them The Name Of Christian. I Think The Complaint Was Confession; A Religious Church Would Not Complain.
Christian
Religious
Thinking
The People Know That They Need In Their Representative Much More Than Talent, Namely, The Power To Make His Talent Trusted.
Power
People
Needs
Is The Parent Better Than The Child Into Whom He Has Cast His Ripened Being? Whence, Then, This Worship Of The Past?
Children
Past
Parent
Infancy Conforms To Nobody; All Conform To It.
Art
Philosophy
History
Or Whipping Its Rough Surface For A Trout.
Lakes
Sea
Fishing
Whence, Then, This Worship Of The Past? The Centuries Are Conspirators Against The Sanity And Authority Of The Soul.
Past
Soul
Self Reliance
Society Is The Stage On Which Manners Are Shown; Novels Are The Literature. Novels Are The Journal Or Record Of Manners; And The New Importance Of These Books Derives From The Fact, That The Novelist Begins To Penetrate The Surface, And Treat This Part Of Life More Worthily.
Book
Facts
Novelists
I Am Primarily Engaged To Myself To Be A Public Servant Of All The Gods, To Demonstrate To All Men That There Is Intelligence Andgood Will At The Heart Of All Things, And Even Higher And Yet Higher Leadings. These Are My Engagements; How Can Your Law Further Or Hinder Me In What I Shall Do To Men?
Heart
Men
Law
We Acquire The Strength We Have Overcome.
Inspirational
Strength
Encouraging
The Action Of The Soul Is Oftener In That Which Is Felt And Left Unsaid Than In That Which Is Said In Any Conversation. It Broods Over Every Society, And Men Unconsciously Seek For It In Each Other.
Men
Soul
Action
Nothing Can Be Colder Than His Head, When The Lightnings Of His Imagination Are Playing In The Sky.
Plato
Sky
Imagination
Silence Is A Solvent That Destroys Personality, And Gives Us Leave To Be Great And Universal.
Giving
Silence
Personality
No Change Of Circumstances Can Repair A Defect Of Character.
Change
Character
Angel
If We Will Not Interfere With Our Thought, But Will Act Entirely, Or See How The Thing Stands In God, We Know The Particular Thing, And Every Thing, And Every Man.
Knowledge
Men
Particular
The Landscape Belongs To The Person Who Looks At It..." -ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature
Looks
Landscape
Whatever You Do, You Need Courage. Whatever Course You Decide Upon, There Is Always Someone To Tell You That You Are Wrong. There Are Always Difficulties Arising That Tempt You To Believe Your Critics Are Right. To Map Out A Course Of Action And Follow It To An End Requires Some Of The Same Courage That A Soldier Needs. Peace Has Its Victories, But It Takes Brave Men And Women To Win Them.
Love
Life
Courage
There Is No Way To Success In Art But To Take Off Your Coat, Grind Paint, And Work Like A Digger On The Railroad, All Day And Every Day.
Art
Philosophy
Work
There Are Men Whose Manners Have The Same Essential Splendor As The Simple And Awful Sculpture On The Friezes Of The Parthenon, And The Remains Of The Earliest Greek Art.
Art
Simple
Men
Do Not Be Caught By The Sensational In Nature, As A Coarse Red-faced Sunset, A Garrulous Waterfall, Or A Fifteen Thousand Foot Mountain... Avoid Prettiness - The Word Looks Much Like Pettiness - And There Is But Little Difference Between Them.
Sunset
Differences
Feet
You Take A Weakness And Start Making It Stronger.. You Don't Have To Build Your Strengths - That You Already Possess... It Is Your Weakness That Needs The Exercise
Encouragement
Exercise
Stronger
American Mind A Wilderness Of Opportunities.
Opportunity
Mind
United States
We Are A Puny And Fickle Folk. Avarice, Hesitation, And Following Are Our Diseases.
America
Fickle
Disease
The Genius Of The Platonists, Is Intoxicating To The Student, Yet How Few Particulars Of It Can I Detach From All Their Books.
Plato
Book
Genius
To This Military Attitude Of The Soul We Give The Name Of Heroism... It Is A Self-trust Which Slights The Restraints Of Prudence, In The Plenitude Of Its Energy And Power To Repair The Harms It May Suffer. The Hero Is A Mind Of Such Balance That No Disturbances Can Shake His Will.
Attitude
Military
Hero
In The Last Analysis, Love Is Only The Reflection Of A Man's Own Worthiness From Other Men.
Love
Friendship
Reflection
Be Lord Of A Day, Through Wisdom And Justice, And You Can Put Up Your History Books.
Wisdom
Book
History
I Read The Other Day Some Verses Written By An Eminent Painter Which Were Original And Not Conventional. The Soul Always Hears An Admonition In Such Lines, Let The Subject Be What It May. The Sentiment They Instil Is Of More Value Than Any Thought They May Contain. To Believe Your Own Thought, To Believe That What Is True For You In Your Private Heart Is True For All Men, - That Is Genius.
Believe
Heart
Men
The History Of Reform Is Always Identical; It Is The Comparison Of The Idea With The Fact. Our Modes Of Living Are Not Agreeable To Our Imagination. We Suspect They Are Unworthy. We Arraign Our Daily Employments.
Ideas
Imagination
Employment
Friends Are Like Spaghetti, They Should Stick Together. The Only Way To Have A Friend Is To Be One.
Friendship
Together
Way
Accept Your Genius And Say What You Think.
Inspirational
Acceptance
Thinking
Life Is Girt All Round With A Zodiac Of Sciences, The Contributions Of Men Who Have Perished To Add Their Point Of Light To Our Sky. ... These Road-makers On Every Hand Enrich Us. We Must Extend The Area Of Life And Multiply Our Relations. We Are As Much Gainers By Finding A Property In The Old Earth As By Acquiring A New Planet.
Science
Men
Light
The Height, The Deity Of Man Is To Be Self-sustained, To Need No Gift, No Foreign Force. Society Is Good When It Does Not Violate Me, But Best When It Is Likest To Solitude.
Men
Self
Solitude
No Reason Can Be Asked Or Given Why The Soul Seeks Beauty. Beauty, In Its Largest And Profoundest Sense, Is One Expression For The Universe. God Is The All-fair. Truth, And Goodness, And Beauty, Are But Different Faces Of The Same All.
Different Faces
Expression
Soul
The Instincts Of The Ant Are Very Unimportant, Considered As The Ants; But The Moment A Ray Of Relation Is Seen To Be A Monitor, A Little Body With A Mighty Heart, Then All Its Habits, Even That Said To Be Recently Observed, That It Never Sleeps, Become Sublime.
Heart
Sleep
Sublime
Underneath The Inharmonious And Trivial Particulars, Is A Musical Perfection, The Ideal Journeying Always With Us, The Heaven Without Rent Or Seam.
Journey
Perfection
Heaven
...most Men Have Bound Their Eyes With One Or Another Handkerchief, And Attached Themselves To Some One Of These Communities Of Opinion. This Conformity Makes Them Not False In A Few Particulars, Authors Of A Few Lies, But False In All Particulars. Their Every Truth Is Not Quite True. Their Two Is Not The Real Two, Their Four Not The Real Four; So That Every Word They Say Chagrins Us, And We Know Not Where To Begin To Set Them Right.
Truth
Real
Lying
Man Is Made Of The Same Atoms The World Is, He Shares The Same Impressions, Predispositions, And Destiny. When His Mind Is Illuminated, When His Heart Is Kind, He Throws Himself Joyfully Into The Sublime Order, And Does, With Knowledge, What The Stones Do By Structure.
Knowledge
Heart
Destiny
Lovers Should Guard Their Strangeness. If They Forgive Too Much, All Slides Into Confusion And Meanness.
Love
Confusion
Forgiving
Let The Reader Find That He Cannot Afford To Omit Any Line Of Your Writing Because You You Have Omitted Every Word That He Can Spare.
Writing
Lines
Reader
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.
Moon
Air
Sun
I Wish The Days To Be As Centuries, Loaded, Fragrant. Now We Reckon Them As Bank-days, By Some Debt Which Is To Be Paid Us, Or Which We Are To Pay, Or Some Pleasure We Are To Taste.
Life
Wish
Experience
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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