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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 110

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The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Land, Ideas
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.175

Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Land, Cities, Benefits
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.250, Cosimo, Inc.

You see, it's all clear, we were meant to be here from the beginning.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Future, Were Meant To Be, Premonition

Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Thinking, May
"Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson (p. 51), March 6, 1995.

Whenever the average intellect of the clergy declines in the balance with the average intellect of the people the churches will be shut up and a new order of things [will] begin.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, Average, Order
"Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson (p. 77), March 6, 1995.

I will not live out of me I will not see with others' eyes My good is good, my evil ill I would be free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Eye, Thinking, Evil
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.86, Harvard University Press

Religionists are clinging to little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law... while the laws of the Law, the great circling truths whose only adequate symbol is the material laws, the astronomy etc. are all unobserved, and sneered at when spoken of.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, Law, Adequate
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.79, Courier Corporation

The exercise of all the senses is as intense pleasure, as anyone will find, who recovers the use of one after being deprived of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Exercise, Thinking, Use
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen E. Whicher (1959). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.44, Harvard University Press

Natural science sharpens the discrimination. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie; their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lying, Thinking, Acid
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen E. Whicher (1959). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.75, Harvard University Press

We are always getting ready to live, but never living... The wave moves onward but the particles of which it is composed do not... It cannot be but that at intervals throughout society there are real men intermixed . . . as the carpenter puts one iron bar in his bannister for every five or six wooden ones.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Real, Moving, Men
"Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson (p. 180), March 6, 1995.

When the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say 'what a good speech,' it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, People, Balance
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1910). “Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson: with annotations”

What is the end of human life? It is not, believe me, the chief end of man that he should make a fortune and beget children whose end is likewise to make a fortune, but it is, in few words, that he should explore himself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children, Believe, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.48, University of Georgia Press

The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise, Thinking, Doubt
"Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson (p. 416), March 6, 1995.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children, Heart, Eye
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.9, Harvard University Press

The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Heart, Sleep, Sublime
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.29, Bantam Classics

We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Eye, Men, Cities
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert J. Von Frank (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry”, p.162, Harvard University Press

The restraining grace of common sense is the mark of all valid minds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Common Sense, Grace, Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poetry and Imagination”, p.1, Editora Dracaena

Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Iron, Gold
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.402, Harvard University Press

If with love thy heart has burned; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed; For when love has once departed From the eyes of the false-hearted, And one by one has torn off quite The bandages of purple light; Though thou wert the loveliest Form the soul had ever dressed, Thou shalt seem, in each reply, A vixen to his altered eye; Thy softest pleadings seem too bold, Thy praying lute will seem to scold; Though thou kept the straightest road, Yet thou errest far and broad.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love, Grief, Heart
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.55, Delphi Classics

Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall, The bias of the will betray.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dream, Wall, Memories
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Susan Sutton Smith, Ralph H. Orth (1990). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.68, University of Missouri Press

Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perception, Life Is, Should
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.471, Library of America

Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Crafts, Politics, States
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.557, Library of America

And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, "If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it." MARTIN LUTHER, Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rome, Devil, London

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stars, Wings, Solitude
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.83, Harvard University Press

I am not engaged to Christianity by decent forms, or saving ordinances; it is not usage, it is not what I do not understand, that binds me to it -- let these be the sandy foundations of falsehoods. What I revere and obey in it is its reality, its boundless charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to my mind, the echo it returns to my thoughts, the perfect accord it makes with my reason through all its representation of God and His Providence; and the persuasion and courage that come out thence to lead me upward and onward.

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

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