Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 139

• Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary strength and concentration to men, and seems to be much used in Nature for fabrics in which local and spasmodic energy is required.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Giving, Fabric

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.146, Harvard University Press

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• The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Doe, Invention, Inventor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.146, Harvard University Press

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• These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Power, Ease

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.518, Harvard University Press

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• Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Cities, Want, Found

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.396

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• New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  New York, Orange, Personality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.387

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• The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Art, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2452, Delphi Classics

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• This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jesus, Hate, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.253, Рипол Классик

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• Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kindness, Evil, Benefits

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.121, Courier Corporation

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• How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or mother's life?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Father, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.320

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• Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Romantic, Envy, Romance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Causes, Influence, Virtue

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1939). “The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.212, Columbia University Press

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• Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Men, Numbers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.283, Graphic Arts Books

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• Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Men, Honor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.90, 谷月社

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• The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be nothing," and "The worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Philosophy, Blessed, Way

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.129, Courier Corporation

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• A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reform, Reformation, Heels

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841). “Essays; with preface by Thomas Carlyle”, p.29

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• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ideas, Imagination, Employment

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1180, Delphi Classics

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• Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Class, Evil, Darkness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.554, Рипол Классик

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• It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Evil, Reform, Improvement

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.314, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Dwelling, Innovation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.264, Harvard University Press

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• In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rose, Joy, Hilarity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

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• As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4265, Delphi Classics

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• Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Society, Conversation, Ceremony

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.53, Courier Corporation

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• If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rain, Eye, Air

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Society

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.399

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• When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Men, Views

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.171, Harvard University Press

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