Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 136

• The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Blood, Apples

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.319

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• There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jesus, Eye, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.60, Courier Corporation

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• The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Teacher, Jesus, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.288, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Sight, Rome

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.66, Harvard University Press

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• As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dwarves, America, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.434, Harvard University Press

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• Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  America, Mind, United States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.216, Library of America

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• Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Sea, America

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.112, Harvard University Press

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• Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Men, Fire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2282, Delphi Classics

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• There is no king or sovereign state
  That can fix a hero's rate;
  Each to all is venerable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Hero, Sovereign

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.110, Delphi Classics

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• The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Events, Heroines

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.209

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• The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advancesto his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Mind, Balance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.374, Library of America

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• Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Hero, Shining

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.353, Рипол Классик

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• But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Trying, Crisis

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.353, Рипол Классик

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• Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jesus, Savages, Village

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.78, Penguin

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• A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Christian, Religious, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.416, Modern Library

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• The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Bible, Civilization, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.97

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• Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, School, Sunday

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.83, Courier Corporation

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• The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fall, Church, Criminals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.82, Penguin

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• To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be madeby the reception of beautiful sentiments.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Men, Miracle

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.81, Penguin

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• Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Fall, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2907, Delphi Classics

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• We ought to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions and practices of the primitive Church for our own. If it could be satisfactorily shown that they esteemed it authorized and transmitted forever, that does not settle the question for us. We know how inveterately they were attached to their Jewish prejudices, and how often even the influence of Christ failed to enlarge their views. On every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a judgement more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the practice of the early ages.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Views, Practice, Forever

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.105, Modern Library

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• American mind a wilderness of opportunities.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Opportunity, Mind, United States

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• In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power ofbeing greatly useful.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Talking, America, Listening

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.215, Penguin

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• Great country, diminutive minds. America is formless, has no terrible and no beautiful condensation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Country, America

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• The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics andtrade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Land, America

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