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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 128

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Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.

Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Giving Up, Rain, Clouds
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.217, Modern Library

The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ruffles, England, Shirts
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “English traits”, p.89

Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

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

There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Country, Horse, Apology
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.268, Graphic Arts Books

A seashell should be the crest of England, not only because it represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish ofthe men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, England, Wave
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.212

A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
May, England, Cleanliness
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.48

What opium is instilled into all disaster? It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction,but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought.

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

No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Progress, Experience
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.213, Penguin

Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Distance, Perfect, Silence
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.192, Harvard University Press

We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with thespirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Understanding, Age, Liberty
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.943, Library of America

Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creativity, Soul, Never Quit
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1404, Delphi Classics

But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed,through which the creator passes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creativity, Doors, Creative
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.87, Courier Corporation

The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.

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

Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Creativity, Reality
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1122, Library of America

We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Creativity, Hands
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1397, Delphi Classics

It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creativity, Men, Genius
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1621, Delphi Classics

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creativity, Mind, Suffering
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.164, U of Nebraska Press

Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.

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

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Song, Sleep, Writing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.92, Harvard University Press

I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personalrelations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love, Remembrance, Soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1329, Delphi Classics

The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jesus, Nature, Humility
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844). “Nature: An Essay ; And, Lectures on the Times”, p.53

I appeal now to the convictions of the communicants, and ask such persons whether they have not been occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of thought between the worship due to God and the commemoration due to Christ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Confusion, Worship, Painful
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.106, Modern Library

I am not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies; but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to oneform a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essentials, Body, Spirit
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1906). “Miscellanies”

The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Marriage, Children, Work
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.89, Courier Corporation

As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work, Mean, Moon
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.61, Cosimo, Inc.

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