Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Tradition

• When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Heart, Fire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.65, Penguin

• Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Philosophy, Thinking, Tradition

  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.7, Harvard University Press

• Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hope, Learning, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1136, Delphi Classics

• Whenever a mind is simple and receives an old wisdom, old things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,--one as much as another.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Teacher, Fall, Future

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.17, Penguin

• Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reading, Two, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1876). “Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson ...”, p.144

• 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

• By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Christian, Mind, Mature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.187, Graphic Arts Books

• The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Perception, Moral

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.399

• The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Creativity, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1619, Delphi Classics

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville