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Thus man is made equal to every event. He can face danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful body, he can run into flame or bullets or pestilence, with duty for his guide.... I am not afraid of accident as long as I am in my place.... Every man's task is his life-preserver. The conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends him.

Thus man is made equal to every event. He can face danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful body, he can run into flame or bullets or pestilence, with duty for his guide.... I am not afraid of accident as long as I am in my place.... Every man's task is his life-preserver. The conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends him.

Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1803–1882)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)

Complete signed selection 311; printed byline: Ralph Waldo Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907

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Ralph Waldo Emerson: Photographic portrait, 1857

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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