Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Church

• If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Men, Pigs

  Journal, Feb. 1855

• I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Church Service, Silence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.175, Harvard University Press

• God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Church, Ruins

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.285, Cosimo, Inc.

• If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, - under all these screens I have diffuculty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Men, Games

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2017). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.144, Broadview Press

• 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

• Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, Church, Saint

  English Traits "Universities" (1856)

• If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Atheist, Church, Minutes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.161, Harvard University Press

• The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Christian, Rain, Fall

  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.81, Harvard University Press

• Whenever the average intellect of the clergy declines in the balance with the average intellect of the people the churches will be shut up and a new order of things [will] begin.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Average, Order

  "Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson (p. 77), March 6, 1995.

• He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Home, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.332, Harvard University Press

• The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Doors, Church, Astronomy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2623, Delphi Classics

• If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Church Bells, Blood, Sound

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.277, Harvard University Press

• The multitude of false churches accredits the true religion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Church, True Religion, Multitudes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays”, p.133, Open Road Media

• I like the church, I like a cowl,
  I love a prophet of the soul;
  And on my heart monastic aisles
  Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
  Yet not for all his faith can see,
  Would I that cowled churchman be.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Fall, Heart

  'The Problem' (1847)

• Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, School, Sunday

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.307, Library of America

• We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kindness, Heart, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.341, Library of America

• How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Art, Tired

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.117, Harvard University Press

• Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Atheist, Men, Religion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2204, Delphi Classics

• A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Christian, Religious, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.416, Modern Library

• I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to go to church no more.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Church, Preacher, Heard

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1124, Delphi Classics

• Go into one of our cool churches, and begin to count the words that might be spared, and in most places the entire sermon will go.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Church, Might, Sermons

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

• I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Men, Two

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1460, Delphi Classics

• 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

• A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Compassion, Church

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.287, Harvard University Press

• If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Cousin, Truth, Opportunity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.191, Harvard University Press

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