Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 113

• It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervadedand dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Memories, Block

  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.34, Harvard University Press

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• The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Grandmother, Science, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.59

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• The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Self, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.453, Library of America

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• In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,--no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Death, Son

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.228, Harvard University Press

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• Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Death, Men, Funeral

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.272, Harvard University Press

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• Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Reality, Surprise

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.216, Penguin

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• It is the same among the men and women, as among the silent trees; always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. Is it, that beauty can never be grasped? In persons and in landscape is equally inaccessible?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reality, Men, Tree

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.45, Courier Corporation

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• There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Order, Rotten

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Men, Giving

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• The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not contradict.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jewels, Soul, United States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Character, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.70, Xist Publishing

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• This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone tocount myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Responsibility, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.202, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Devil, Shakers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.349

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• I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each ofthese works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Spiritual, Taken

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.115, Library of America

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• The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, School, Eye

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• The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Choices, Political

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.857, Library of America

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• A man should not be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Tents, Should

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.240

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• An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Change, Rivers, Gold

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.177, Penguin

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• In spite of Virtue and the Muse,
  Nemesis will have her dues,
  And all our struggles and our toils
  Tighter wind the giant coils.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Struggle, Fate, Wind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.212, The Floating Press

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• Can rules or tutors educate
  The semigod whom we await?
  He must be musical,
  Tremulous, impressional,
  Alive to gentle influence
  Of landscape and of sky
  And tender to the spirit-touch
  Of man's or maiden's eye.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Eye, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.363

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• Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no character until seen with the shore or the ship.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ocean, Character, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.226

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• My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeinga Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Responsibility, Roots, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.485

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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