Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Unity

• The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Broken Heart, Motivation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.31, Courier Corporation

• We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wise, Animal

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.160, Harvard University Press

• We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Silence, Soul

  "Natural Abundance: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Guide to Prosperity".

• We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Men, Jail

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.265, Bantam Classics

• ...man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the center of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Unity, Rays

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.21, Library of America

• Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prayer, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.81, Cosimo, Inc.

• There is in nature a parallel unity which corresponds to the unity in the mind and makes it available. This methodizing mind meets no resistance in its attempts. The scattered blocks, with which it strives to form a symmetrical structure, fit. This design following after finds with joy that like design went before. Not only man puts things in a row, but things belong in a row.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Block, Men, Design

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.21, University of Georgia Press

• Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Unity, Answers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.425, Harvard University Press

• By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Agreement

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (189?). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

• When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Order, Unity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.28, Courier Corporation

• Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals the fixed species; through many species the genus; through all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Eggs, Clouds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.106, Penguin

• Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Journey, Perfection, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.484, Library of America

• If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly back to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Two, Diversity, Unity

• Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Grateful, Eggs, People

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.369, University of Georgia Press

• God is Unity, but always works in variety.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Oneness, Unity, Variety

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.177, Harvard University Press

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