"You cannot hide any secret. If the..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.
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More by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

More on Authenticity

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“Outside among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

More on Character

“I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”
— Jane Austen
“It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.”
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“Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.”
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