Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 135

• I appeal now to the convictions of the communicants, and ask such persons whether they have not been occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of thought between the worship due to God and the commemoration due to Christ.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Confusion, Worship, Painful

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.106, Modern Library

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• I am not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies; but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to oneform a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Essentials, Body, Spirit

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1906). “Miscellanies”

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• The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Marriage, Children, Work

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.89, Courier Corporation

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• As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Work, Mean, Moon

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.61, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Integrity, Work, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.238

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• At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Selfish, Work

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.46, Library of America

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• The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Work, Home, Differences

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.353

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• The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Work, Moving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.153, Penguin

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• The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Power, People, Needs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.328, Modern Library

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• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fear, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.130, Harvard University Press

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• Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Struggle, Winning, Government

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.99, University of Georgia Press

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• Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, Real, Ambition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.387, Modern Library

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• A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Personality, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.340, Harvard University Press

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• Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Prayer, War

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.560, Library of America

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• We might as easily reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Wind, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1502, Delphi Classics

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• Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Imagination, Ordinary, Limits

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.132

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• Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reality, Genius, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Wallace E. Williams, Joseph Slater (1987). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men: seven lectures”, p.10, Harvard University Press

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• Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;--and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Art, Angel

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.378, Library of America

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• An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Perfection, Action

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.28, Harvard University Press

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• There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Light, Presence Of Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.354, Рипол Классик

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• Sole and self-commanded works,
  Fears not undermining days,
  Grows by decays,
  And, by the famous might that lurks
  In reaction and recoil,
  Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Flames, Ice

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.48, Graphic Arts Books

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• Silent rushes the swift Lord
  Through ruined systems still restored,
  Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
  Plants with worlds the wilderness;
  Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
  Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
  House and tenant go to ground,
  Lost in God, in Godhead found.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Eden, Apples

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.158

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• It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Islands, Race

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844). “An Address Delivered in the Court-house in Concord, Massachusetts, on 1st August, 1844: On the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies”, p.30

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• No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Art, Travel

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.393

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• Everything good is on the highway.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Travel, Highways

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.254, Harvard University Press

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