Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Impulse

• The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Men, Generosity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.133, Cosimo, Inc.

• A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Fate, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1859). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life”, p.23

• The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Should Have, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1491, Delphi Classics

• That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.134, Graphic Arts Books

• Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Europe, Religion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.510

• It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Creativity, Men, Genius

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1621, Delphi Classics

• With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Air, House, Inspire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.180, Bantam Classics

• All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Рипол Классик

• Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Exaggeration Is, Generosity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.42, Courier Corporation

• So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Soul, Facts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.102, Coyote Canyon Press

• Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Voice, Secret, Heroism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1362, Delphi Classics

• I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil.'

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Church, Devil

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.43, 谷月社

• Wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses have great resources, and return from far.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Iron, Liberty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.71, North Atlantic Books

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