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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 130

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Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.

Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Perspective, Glimpse
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.281, Harvard University Press

We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Mean, Soup
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.414, Modern Library

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Character, Victory
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.336, Modern Library

...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason and faith.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Village, Woods, Return
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.30, Penguin

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion; all his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation occasions for the introduction of what he has to say. The favorites of society are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contended and contenting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Success, Memories, Men

Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before newflashes of moral worth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Morality, Ashamed
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.213

And the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Character, Dark
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1084, Library of America

Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is thenatural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Men, Knowing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1912). “Emerson's Complete Works: Society and solitude”

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his magnetisms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friends, Character, Fate
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.269, Penguin

So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strong, Selfish, Character
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.327

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not forostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Giving, Perfect

The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemicalenergy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Aristocracy, Natural
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.232

Society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him; he has become tediously good insome particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Character, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.314, Jazzybee Verlag

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Men, Fellows
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1504, Delphi Classics

In our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rain, Character, Bridges
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.488

The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.

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

A breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of Right and Necessity. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Blow, Air, Order
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.416, Harvard University Press

Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power, Men, Victory
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1167, Delphi Classics

There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time, Stars, Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.16, Graphic Arts Books

Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to bepainted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time, Heart, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.63, Courier Corporation

Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sports, Time, Space
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.57, Penguin

Whoever has had the experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse from that heart isan oath from the Most High. I know not what the word sublime means, if it be not the intimations, in this infant, of a terrific force.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Believe, Heart
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.416, Harvard University Press

Dare to love God without mediator or veil.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Veils, Dare
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.90, Harvard University Press

I am so much a Unitarian as this: that I believe the human mind can admit but one God, and that every effort to pay religious homage to more than one being goes to take away all right ideas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Religious, Believe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2905, Delphi Classics

Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Heart, Deeds
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.94, Delphi Classics

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