Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 158

• The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fall, Church, Criminals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.82, Penguin

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• To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be madeby the reception of beautiful sentiments.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Men, Miracle

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.81, Penguin

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• Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Fall, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2907, Delphi Classics

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• We ought to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions and practices of the primitive Church for our own. If it could be satisfactorily shown that they esteemed it authorized and transmitted forever, that does not settle the question for us. We know how inveterately they were attached to their Jewish prejudices, and how often even the influence of Christ failed to enlarge their views. On every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a judgement more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the practice of the early ages.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Views, Practice, Forever

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.105, Modern Library

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• American mind a wilderness of opportunities.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Opportunity, Mind, United States

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• In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power ofbeing greatly useful.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Talking, America, Listening

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.215, Penguin

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• Great country, diminutive minds. America is formless, has no terrible and no beautiful condensation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Country, America

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• The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics andtrade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Land, America

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• From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Distance, Cities

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• But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honesty, Eye, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.94

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• I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wish, Bread, Arsenic

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.88, 谷月社

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• Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Sleep, Two

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.145, Harvard University Press

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• The richest of all lords is Use,
  And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse.
  Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
  Drink the wild air's salubrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Health, Sunshine, Sea

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1859). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life”, p.243

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• Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is. The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fear, Pain, Superficial

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.212, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Respect, Boredom, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.255, Harvard University Press

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• It is very certain that the strong British race which has now overrun much of this continent, must also overrun [Texas], and Mexico and Oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and methods it was done.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Race, Texas

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Elliot Cabot (1887). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a General Index and a Memoir”

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• The enthusiast always finds the master, the masters, whom he seeks. Always genius seeks genius, desires nothing so much as to be a pupil and to find those who can lend it aid to perfect itself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perfect, Desire, Genius

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• For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, War, Sea

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.94, 谷月社

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• There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, College, Men

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• Man is the dwarf of himself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Dwarves, Mankind

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

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• For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring orrather terminating my own soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Heaven, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.172, Graphic Arts Books

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• A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Lying, Heart

  Address in Divinity College, americanliterature.com. July 15, 1838.

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• The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Men, Office

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Destiny, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.477

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• Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Country, Fashion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.44, Xist Publishing

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