Quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Emerson in His Journals , ed. by Joel Porte (1982).:"Nominalist and Realist" Essays, Second Series (1844)"Ability" English Traits (1856)"Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1844" Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903)"Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1884" Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903)

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youth (24) death (15) love (11) wisdom (11) aging (9) memory (7) experience (6) folly (6) prayer (5) women (5)

But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Circles," Essays, First Series (1841, repr. 1847).

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