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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 129

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The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the

The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Integrity, Work, Eye
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.238

At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strong, Selfish, Work
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.46, Library of America

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work, Home, Differences
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.353

The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dog, Work, Moving
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.153, Penguin

The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power, People, Needs
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.328, Modern Library

Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,--a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear, Mean, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.130, Harvard University Press

Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Struggle, Winning, Government
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.99, University of Georgia Press

Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pain, Real, Ambition
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.387, Modern Library

A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Party, Personality, Politics
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.340, Harvard University Press

Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dream, Prayer, War
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.560, Library of America

We might as easily reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Party, Wind, Giving
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1502, Delphi Classics

Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Imagination, Ordinary, Limits
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.132

Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reality, Genius, World
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Wallace E. Williams, Joseph Slater (1987). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men: seven lectures”, p.10, Harvard University Press

Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;--and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Art, Angel
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.378, Library of America

It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Party, Adventure, Sea
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.158, Library of America

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascinationfor all educated Americans.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Travel, Egypt, Self
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.180, Harvard University Press

Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Country, Travel, Doe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.365, Рипол Классик

I am always insincere, as always knowing there are other moods.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowing, Sincerity, Mood
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph H. Orth, Glen M. Johnson (1994). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.137, University of Missouri Press

If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is readyto sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sincerity, Mood, Prophet
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1518, Delphi Classics

As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Men, Progress
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.436

I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Past, Remembrance, Leaving
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but it is the soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Soul, World
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1133, Delphi Classics

The essence of age is intellect. Wherever that appears, we call it old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essence, Age, Intellect
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.160, Harvard University Press

For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mother, Dream, World
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.165, Рипол Классик

The world is the ring of his spells, And the play of his miracles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Play, Miracle
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.61, Cosimo, Inc.

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