Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Conformity

• To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Positive, Beauty

• Your genuine action will explain itself, and
  will explain your other genuine actions.
  Your conformity explains nothing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Action, Conformity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.266, Library of America

• It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Graduation, Philosophy

  'Essays' (1841) 'Self-Reliance'

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Reality, Self

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.21, Coyote Canyon Press

• A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Courage, Men, Being Different

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1972). “Early Lectures: 1838-1842”, p.309, Harvard University Press

• These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reality, Self, Names

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.42, 谷月社

• ...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Real, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (EasyRead Large Bold Edition)”, p.69, ReadHowYouWant.com

• Do not follow where the path may lead.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Graduation, Travel, Adventure

• Our expenses are all for conformity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Individuality, Conformity, Expenses

• 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

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Reliance, Aversion, Conformity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.22, Harvard University Press

• Conformity is the ape of harmony.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Peace, Apes, Conformity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.492, Harvard University Press

• You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Honesty, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: English traits”, p.128, Harvard University Press

• A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Games, Self Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.132, Harvard University Press

• The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Greatness, Average

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.266, Library of America

• Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Heart, Cake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.562

• The virtue in most request is conformity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Reliance, Aversion, Conformity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.32

• The great majority of men grow up and grow old in seeming and following.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Growing Up, Men, Majority

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3928, Delphi Classics

• One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Differences, Forgiving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.234, Рипол Классик

• I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Consistency, Dinner, Lasts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.134, Harvard University Press

• Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Hands, Firsts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1838). “An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, 15 July, 1838”, p.27

• I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Air, Luxury, Pay

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.280, Harvard University Press

• We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very badcompany, and was never invited to dinner.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Care, Dinner

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.282, Penguin

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