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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 67

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The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and

The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hate, Honor, Deeds
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.527, Harvard University Press

You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of histuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop- windows.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Children, Latin
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.75, Harvard University Press

The intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. The right punishment of one out of tune, isto make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them every thing which they need.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Responsibility, Intelligent

The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Travel, Home
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.278, Library of America

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Teacher, Wish
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1317, Delphi Classics

We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young anddodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Promise, Debt
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.204, Penguin

All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Memories, Lying, Exercise
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.57, Coyote Canyon Press

The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Soul, Events, Robes
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.58, Coyote Canyon Press

The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Running, Society, Wheels
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.13, Harvard University Press

Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Country, Children, Flower
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.43, Penguin

Is it not manifest that our academic institutions should have a wider scope; that they should not be timid and keep the ruts of the last generation, but that wise men thinking for themselves and heartily seeking the good of mankind, and counting the cost of innovation, should dare to arouse the young to a just and heroic life; that the moral nature should be addressed in the school-room, and children should be treated as the high-born candidates of truth and virtue?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Wise, Children
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.51, University of Georgia Press

A third felicity of age is that it has found expression. The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reality, Careers, Expression
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.165, Harvard University Press

Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Heart, College
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.49, Modern Library

No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no share.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Country, Art
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1404, Delphi Classics

Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dark, Power, Perception
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.208, Harvard University Press

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pride, Men, Thinking
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.50, 谷月社

Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Horse, Selfish, Pride
Ralph Waldo, Emerson, (2013). “Nature - Conduct of Life”, p.191, Read Books Ltd

He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sorry, Men, Good Man
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.501, Рипол Классик

The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jesus, Facts, Christ
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.127, Courier Corporation

But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, America, Clouds
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.96, Library of America

The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Faith, Hope, Sight
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.245

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be an abstract of the common conscience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Song, Law, Shining
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.527, Рипол Классик

We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self, Law, Common
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Orations and Lectures”

I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, "Are you victimizable?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Spiritual, America, United States
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1458, Delphi Classics

I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
America, Dying, United States
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.240, Harvard University Press

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